Before I got sick, I lived with an assumption I never even questioned: there would always be next year. If I wanted to visit a country, I could do it later. If I had an idea, I could start it in a few months. If there was something I really wanted to experience, it didn’t matter if I postponed it. Time felt like an invisible promise, something that would always be there waiting for me.

Then I got ill. For a while, I genuinely didn’t know what my future was going to look like. I was forced to face something I’d always kept at a safe distance: the possibility that there might not be a “later.” Even though I’m still here, that experience changed something inside me. I don’t know if it’s healthy or not, and honestly, I still ask myself that sometimes. But I no longer experience time in the same way.

Now, when I say I want to go to Greece, Japan, Iceland or Poland, it’s not because I’m trying to tick countries off a list. It’s because I’ve stopped assuming that next year is guaranteed. When I have an idea, I want to start it. When there’s something I want to learn, create or experience, I don’t want to leave it sitting in a mental drawer labelled “one day.” I used to think there would always be another opportunity. Now I know that’s only an assumption.

I’ve tried explaining this feeling to people around me, and I also understand why it’s difficult to relate to. If you’ve never had your future suddenly become uncertain, it’s natural to think you have time. I used to think exactly the same way. But after living through that experience, I find it much harder to understand endless postponements, decisions that drag on for months, or plans that keep getting pushed further into the future. I know nobody does it with bad intentions, but I experience those moments differently now because they remind me of something I can no longer forget: time isn’t something any of us owns.

I’m not trying to rush through life, and I’m certainly not saying we should treat every day as if it were our last. I don’t want a life driven by panic. I simply don’t want to live with the illusion that time is infinite anymore. If my illness taught me anything, it wasn’t how fragile life is—we all know that in theory. It taught me how easy it is to keep postponing the life we want because we’re convinced there will always be another year.

Maybe there will be.

Maybe there won’t.

The truth is, none of us knows. And I don’t want to reach the end of my life realising that the only reason I didn’t do the things that mattered to me was because I believed I had more time than I actually did.