Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash


We are all obsessed with timing. 

We check it, chase it, curse it, pray for it. 

We say “too soon,” “too late,” “if only,” as if the universe keeps a secret calendar we were never shown. 

But the deeper truth—the one that only becomes visible when life grows short—is this: there is no such a thing as perfect timing, and it is always, cruelly, mercifully, exactly now.

 

 The Invisible Thread That Runs Through Every Life

Timing decides everything, yet we rarely notice it until it hurts.

  • A baby born twenty minutes earlier or later. 
  • A text read at a red light. 
  • A flight delayed by weather that saves someone from being on the plane that crashes. 
  • A heart attack that strikes the day after the wedding, or the week before retirement.

These are not coincidences. 

They are the silent click of the clock we pretend isn’t there.

In love, timing is god. 

You can meet the most extraordinary person in the world at the exact moment you are too broken to recognise them—and they remain a stranger who once held the door for you at a coffee shop. 

Or you meet someone ordinary when your heart is finally ready, and they become your entire world.

Careers rise and fall on timing. 

The entrepreneur who launches six months before the market turns. 

The artist who is discovered the year the world is hungry for exactly what she makes. 

The genius who dies unknown because his ideas arrived fifty years too early.

We feel these truths in our bones, so we spend our lives trying to control the uncontrollable.

 

 The Cruel Myth of “Perfect Timing”

Most of us live in waiting.

We wait for the perfect time to:

- Quit the job

- Start the business

- Leave the marriage

- Have the child

- Write the book

- Say “I love you”

- Say “I’m sorry”

- Say “I forgive you”

 We tell ourselves stories about readiness, about conditions, about alignment of stars. 

But perfect timing, as we imagine it—calm, convenient, painless—is a fantasy we invented to protect ourselves from risk.

 The universe does not wait for our comfort. 

It moves, and when we insist on waiting for the perfect moment, we often discover too late that the perfect moment was the messy, terrifying, imperfect one we refused to seize.

 

 The Paradox: There Is Only Timing, and It Is Always Perfect

 Here is the secret the dying understand first:

 Every moment that happened was the only moment that could have happened, not because fate is written, but because it already occurred.

The promotion you missed became the push you needed to start your company. 

The heartbreak that nearly destroyed you taught you how to love better the person you eventually married. 

The diagnosis that came “too early” gave you the urgency to finally live instead of postpone living.

 When you stand at the edge of death, you do not say, “I wish things had happened differently.” 

You say, “Ah. So that’s why.”

 Suddenly the delays make sense. 

The wrong turns reveal themselves as the only path. 

The pains become the precise teachers required.

 Everything arrives exactly when it must, wearing whatever disguise is necessary.

 

 Death: The Ultimate Revealer of Timing

 Death is the only completely honest critic of a life.

 It never lies about timing.

 Some leave at twenty-five, mid-sentence, mid-dream. 

Others linger past a hundred, waiting for a hand to hold.

 Both are perfect.

 The young death shocks us into waking up. 

The long death teaches us patience and gratitude.

 I have sat with many who were dying. 

Not one—not a single one—regretted risks taken at the “wrong” time. 

They regretted only the risks not taken while there was still time.

 They did not wish for more perfect conditions. 

They wished for more courage inside the imperfect ones.

 

How to Live Inside the Truth of Timing

 1. Stop waiting for readiness. You will never feel ready. Do it anyway.

2. Treat every delay as preparation, not punishment.

3. Treat every acceleration as mercy, not cruelty.

4. When you are terrified to act, remember: the timing will never feel perfect. That is how you know it is time.

5. Forgive every past version of yourself for not knowing what they could not yet know.

6. Say the thing today. Send the message. Make the call. Book the ticket. Start the project. End the relationship that is already over.

7. The universe is not withholding the right moment. It is offering you this one.

 

Conclusion

 One day—maybe tomorrow, maybe fifty years from now—the clock will make its last sound for you.

 And in that moment, you will understand completely:

 You were never early. 

You were never late.

 You were always, astonishingly, impossibly, right on time.

 The only question left is whether you will spend whatever time remains pretending you can control the timing, or whether you will finally surrender to the beauty of its relentless, mysterious perfection.

 The clock is ticking. 

Not to scare you.

To remind you.