Ah, time. That pesky little construct we think we have nailed down. We carry around our watches, mark our calendars, and keep ourselves beholden to schedules, all the while believing time is this rigid, immovable force. But it’s not, is it? It’s like trying to hold sand in your hands—the more you squeeze, the faster it slips away. And then, there’s this mind-blowing fact I came across recently: Big Diomede and Little Diomede. Two islands just three miles apart, separated by the International Date Line, which means they’re practically a whole day apart. I mean, what? You can literally stand on one island and look at yesterday or tomorrow. How wild is that?

Imagine that. Standing on Little Diomede in the U.S., gazing over at Big Diomede in Russia, knowing you’re staring at tomorrow. And then, if you’re in the mood for a little time travel, just wait for the sea to freeze over, and you could take a walk—literally—into yesterday. Or tomorrow. Your choice.

Suddenly, time doesn’t feel quite as solid as it once did, does it? We treat time like it’s this strict, absolute force, marching us forward, ticking away in seconds, minutes, hours, days. And yet, it’s all a matter of perspective. Just by standing on a different patch of ground, we can shift from today to tomorrow. Or look back at yesterday. We like to think we’re living in a fixed moment, but time isn’t as linear as we pretend it is. It bends, it warps, and it stretches depending on where we stand—and maybe even who we are.

Have you ever noticed how time seems to fly when you’re having fun but drags on forever when you’re bored out of your mind? It’s the same concept. Time isn’t some static, objective thing. It’s relative. It’s subjective. It’s both something we can experience intensely and something that can slip through our fingers without us even noticing.

And it’s fleeting. Oh, how it’s fleeting. We try to hold on to it, but time doesn’t care about our attempts to corral it. It just keeps moving, shifting from moment to moment, pulling us along for the ride whether we’re ready or not. You can stand on one of those Diomede islands and peer across to the other side all you want, but you can’t stop time from ticking away. Whether it’s tomorrow, today, or yesterday—it’s all just a blink.

So here I am, thinking about how we try to control time. We want it to fit into our nice little boxes—into calendars and clocks and deadlines—but the truth is, it doesn’t work like that. It moves at its own pace, not ours. And sometimes, all you can do is pause, take a breath, and realize that time is both fleeting and malleable. One minute you’re here, the next you’re staring at tomorrow. Or yesterday. Or, if you’re lucky, both.

Time, it seems, is less of a straight line and more of a beautifully chaotic mess. So, maybe instead of trying to pin it down, we should embrace the ride—whether we’re stuck in today or taking a frosty walk into tomorrow.