How to Stop Time

by Matt Haig

Forever, Emily Dickinson said, is composed of nows. But how do you inhabit the now you are in? How do you stop the ghosts of all the other nows from getting in? How, in short, do you live?

We have the knowledge to realise we are just a mass of quanta and particles, like everything else is, and yet we keep trying to separate ourselves from the universe we live in, to give ourselves a meaning above that of a tree or a rock or a cat or a turtle.

Was also my nationality, too, though who lets nationality define them? Apart from idiots.’

The secret was the opposite. The secret was never to relax. The secret was never to believe you are good. Never to forget about the drop.

You had to wait until the orange was starting to brighten, become that raw bright pink-yellow-orange. This was forging heat. The heat of change.

‘Shit is a fine word,’ I said diplomatically. ‘It is quick to its point.’

For decades and decades and decades I have bemoaned people who say they feel old, but I now realise it is perfectly possible for anyone to feel old. All they need to do is become a teacher.

But as you get older, Anton, you realise that you never get away with things. The human mind has its own. . . prisons. You don’t have a choice over everything in life.’

every present moment is paying for a future one.

What use is a talent that pains you?

for I knew (of course I knew) that women were the ones who had to die at the bottom of rivers to prove their innocence.

It may seem strange, falling in love with someone because of a gesture, but sometimes you can read an entire person in a single moment. The way you can study a grain of sand and understand the universe. Love at first sight might or might not be a thing, but love in a single moment is.

It is the simplest, purest joy on earth, I realise, to make someone you care about laugh.

And, just as it only takes a moment to die, it only takes a moment to live. You just close your eyes and let every futile fear slip away. And then, in this new state, free from fear, you ask yourself: who am I? If I could live without doubt what would I do? If I could be kind without the fear of being fucked over? If I could love without fear of being hurt? If I could taste the sweetness of today without thinking of how I will miss that taste tomorrow? If I could not fear the passing of time and the people it will steal? Yes. What would I do? Who would I care for? What battle would I fight? Which paths would I step down? What joys would I allow myself? What internal mysteries would I solve? How, in short, would I live?

‘“I speak the truth not so much as I would, but as much as I dare, and I dare a little more as I grow older.”’

That is the whole thing with the future. You don’t know. At some point you have to accept that you don’t know. You have to stop flicking ahead and just concentrate on the page you are on.