how can you be late in life when its your life?

15 Sep, 2026

I'm 25 years old, and I just started taking driving lessons. I live in a city built entirely around cars, and not having one requires explanation as to why I posses neither. I'm asked frequently: "You're 25 with no license?" It's hard not to turn it into a pitiful conclusion of my own inadequacy, whirling thoughts of I'm late! I'm late! I'm late!

Feeling behind has always been the most isolating experience for me. It's not the thought I hate but the harrowing conviction that I somehow lost a memo that the rest of the world got.¹ Naturally, I felt panicky when I got asked about my license, and during a journal entry, I asked myself: Late to what?

At 18, I left my parents' house for a foreign country with no money and a sheltered childhood behind me instead of a safety net. I fought for a full scholarship then, five years later, for a work visa to escape my war-torn country. I built a career out of nothing. The driving lessons are just the newest thing on a very long list of things I did first, alone. So how can be I late to my own life?

If you're reading this with your own I'm running late loop, I want you to name the race. Not the feeling, but the actual thing. Who else is running it? What does the course look like? You won't be able to. There is no shared track, no separated lanes, no official gun that everyone else heard except you. There is only your own distinct, unrepeatable experience of this vast, unpredictable life, and you can never be late for it. Because it's yours.