The Soft Tread Toward the End

There’s a quiet truth nestled deep in the folds of this life: we are all going to leave it.

Not someday. Not hypothetically. Not as a poetic idea. But really, truly—each of us, like every soul that walked before, will one day lie down and not rise again. This isn’t morbid; it’s holy. It’s the only certainty we have, and yet we treat it like a rumor we’d rather not hear.

If you’ve ever sat at the bedside of someone you love as they neared their final days, you’ll know what I mean. The breath slows. The body, once so firm and full of command, becomes soft, almost transparent. And something shifts behind the eyes. There’s a turning inward, as if they’ve begun walking down a path only they can see. And in those moments, regrets rise like old ghosts. Not always loud—but they’re there. Whispered in the space between held hands.

It’s almost always the same story: I thought I had more time. Time to say the truth. Time to be brave. Time to finally do the things that sang quietly in the background their whole lives—the dance lessons, the forgiveness, the long overdue apology, the life of purpose they postponed for the sake of keeping the peace or paying the bills or waiting for the “right” moment.

But there is no perfect time. There is only now, and then gone.

You see, our lives are not lines but circles. Everything returns. The energy we put into the world—the resentment, the kindness, the dreams left in a drawer—all of it loops back. What we don’t resolve waits for us. What we don’t feel hardens. What we don’t speak clogs the throat like unshed tears. Even our illnesses whisper of what we have buried.

There’s a deeper rhythm beneath the surface of this world. A kind of intelligence, not of the mind but of the soul. It moves with the seasons. It watches how we live, and what we hold too tightly. It offers us lesson after lesson, always leading us home—but home isn’t a place. It’s a remembering. Of who we really are beneath the layers of fear and pretending.

So, I ask you: What in your life is still tender and unresolved? What corners have you ignored because they frightened you, because they asked you to grow beyond what you believed you were capable of? What part of you waits for permission to finally come alive?

You are still here. You are still breathing. And while that is true, you still get to choose. You can participate. You can stop mid-step and turn around. You can speak the truth and let the old stories fall apart. You can love more fiercely. You can be less right and more real. You can offer yourself to the world not in pieces, but whole.

It won’t always be easy. Growth rarely is. Sometimes it looks like loss before it feels like freedom. But the world rearranges around authenticity. When you step into your truth, life meets you there. That’s the law of it. As natural and certain as the sun rising.

Live now—not just for yourself, but for those whose time ran out. Let your courage be the altar they never got to kneel at. Let your voice carry the songs they swallowed. Let your peace be the inheritance they couldn’t pass down. And when the day comes, as it surely will, when you begin to tread softly toward the same mystery they entered—let it be with a heart emptied of regret, full of presence and wonder.

Participate now, or forever find your peace.

But know this: peace isn’t something that waits at the end.

It’s something you choose, right now, by how you live.

Hari Om Tat Sat