THE STORY ABOUT NOW

Once upon a time, in the land of windy shines, a timeless mind called Now wondered where it truly belonged. It was a strange kind of being in a tiny kingdom made of light and wind, and it never felt like the others. Something in its existence was always unfinished—as if one breath were missing to feel alive.

The kingdom was full of shimmering souls, born from winds and shines, each carrying the rhythm of time inside them—except Now. Past, the mother held gentle warmth in her soul; she loved with softness and memory. Future, the father, carried the cold breath of what has not yet come; distant, silent, never fully satisfied. They were not woman and man—they were time itself split into what was and what could be. Both loved Now in their own ways: Past with stories and faded whispers, Future with silent expectations and distant hope. But neither could give Now what it needed—because Now did not want to be yesterday or tomorrow. It wanted to be something that exists. So, restless and tender.

Now stepped toward one place no soul dared to stay—the River of Souls. It was the scariest part of the kingdom, the river where everything moved—memories, feelings, forgotten dreams—fast, liquid, merciless. Its waters were clear enough to show truth, deep enough to drown in it. And Now stepped in.

At first the river felt like cold glass. Then it opened like a lung. It breathed around Now, and in that breath, colors began—opal blues, bruised purples, the gold of late afternoon, the faint green that lives behind closed eyelids when the sun is strong. Fragments drifted past: a half-finished goodbye, the smell of rain in someone’s hair, a room whose window was always a little open. The river did not judge. It only carried. And for the first time, Now felt the ache of belonging to a movement greater than itself.

Time to time and every next time, Now stayed in the flow and paused the timeless self it had been taught to leave. The river perfumed Now with the scents of those who had loved and lost—orange peels on a kitchen table, pages turned with slow fingers, a shirt folded and unfolded until it was warm with memory. The more the river carried, the less Now needed to run from it. The fear that used to wear the shape of Future, and the sweetness that used to wear the face of Past, were both here, dissolved into a single current. And yet a quiet hunger lingered: the hunger to exist without slipping away.

Now created a bubble - small, fragile, infinite pause in the flow. Not to disappear, but to feel. Inside the delicate sphere, the river’s roar softened, and the world brightened into stillness. It was like a room lit by a candle in the middle of a storm; the storm never stopped, but the light did not flicker. In that pause, understanding bloomed like steam from a cup of tea: Now was not just a moment. It was the key—the only place where a soul can heal, not in remembering or imagining, but here, where feeling is allowed to exist fully.

The bubble drifted until it touched the shore of a human chest. Now slipped through skin the way dawn slips through curtains and became a breath held between one heartbeat and the next. Inside someone who had loved deeply and lost honestly; someone who still remembered the smell of another’s skin on a pillow, the color of a sunset shared in silence, the warmth of a voice that no longer speaks. This human stood between “what was” and “what will never be the same again,” hands resting over a sternum as if guarding a lantern. Past stood behind and whispered,, You were happy once”. Future waited ahead and asked,, What will you do now? “But Now wrapped itself around the person’s ribs and said,, Stay. -Feel this. Feel until it becomes truth. Because only what is felt can be healed. “

Deeper into the River

When the human slept, Now dreamed for them. The River of Souls started again, not as water, but as a stairwell of light descending through itself. Each step was a sensation: a door left ajar; the grain of a wooden table under the palm; laughter that warmed the teeth; the shock of a name spoken by the right voice. On the lowest step, the river widened into a mirror that did not reflect faces but patterns—braids of choices and chances, the handwriting of storms. Now touched the surface and watched circles move outward, counting not seconds but tendernesses: the time it takes to forgive, the time it takes for a wound to unclench, the time it takes for a memory to admit it is over and still be beautiful.

Now learned the sound of heartbeats. That feel was a note with two ways—the one who feels and one who runs from it—and both changed by the sentence of the soul. Pain did not end. It curved back like a question mark and waited for an answer that only presence could give. The river showed that answers are not loud. They arrive like a chair pulled closer to a window. They arrive like a hand that does not fix but stays.

On the far land, Future held a lantern that burned with plans: new rooms, new mornings, new names on mailboxes. On the nearby land, Past tended a garden no one else could enter, raspberries that tasted like summers, old roads that knew where you were going before you did. The river moved between them without choosing. Now stood in the middle and understood why desire tires the heart: to live only forward is to grieve the soil; to live only backward is to drown the seed. The task was not to choose the land but to become the bridge. And bridges do not argue with the river. They let it pass and remain.

The Human Mirror

The human carried rooms inside the chest. In one room a chair faced a window that looked onto a sky that could not decide about weather. In another room there was a shelf with a cup turned upside down; no one remembered why. There was a piano with keys older than any yellow of sun that is coming to visit every day, and when the human stop speaking for days, music was there to ask on their behalf: ,,Are we allowed to love again without betraying what ended? “

Now learned the weight of questions. Some were small and soft and could be held with both hands. Some were iron gates and lived in the throat. Some were stitched into the body like hidden pockets where the fingers of memory kept finding the same coin—his cologne, her laughter, their ordinary afternoons.

Past sat at the table and told the honest parts of stories, the pieces we edit when we want to be brave. Future stood by the door, impatient but not willing to get in, as if knocking on the doormight break it in any moment. Three cups were placed on the table, and a moment of silence was observed by the each of them. The human drank one by one and finally tasted its own life—not the picture of it, not the breathless trailer of it, but the life itself, grain by grain, swallow by swallow. It did not taste like victory. It tasted like clarity.

There was a night when the bed felt bigger than the room. The human turned onto its side and the sheet cooled the thigh like a small weather front. Now was leaning towards the spine and matched its breathing like a flow that needed to go on. The air inside became a metronome. Between inhales, a thoughts returned with new thunder: ,, Maybe healing is not the ending of pain but the decision that pain is allowed to finish what it started—to teach me where I am tender, to show me what I cannot carry alone, to name the rooms that need windows…”

In the morning, the mirror did not accuse. It reflected someone who had learned to bow—to the bruise, to the bloom, to the exact day they were on. Past placed a ribbon around a memory and said,, Keep this.” Future opened the curtains and said, ,,Try this.” Now took the hand and said,, Begin here.”

The Strong Realization

On the day the river was quiet enough to hear heartbeat, Now stood at the center of everything and understood the shape of its own name. It was not a point but a passage, not a knife edge but a doorway with the door taken off. Past and Future were not opposite directions; they were walls holding up the same room. Presence was the room. The heart was the light switch. Breath was how the room remembered it and created windows. And then the realization arrived—not loud, not slow, but exact: The present is not the absence of time. It is the meeting place of everything that has ever asked to be seen. When you stand here, nothing is discarded. The child who learned to be quiet, the lover who kept the letter, the parent who faced the empty chair—none of them are banished. They are welcomed into one place wide enough for all of them to stand without arguing. This is why courage is silent. It is not a shout against the dark; it is a hand on the light.

Now returned to the human chest as a steadying warmth. Human walked through the day, and the world did not change—and yet it did. The street still had its usual noises. The coffee still cools if you forgot to drink it. The news still arrived like rain. Objects now had edges once more, but they no longer cut. The body regained its sense of weight, and this weight was no longer burdensome. The future was no longer a looming cliff, but an open road ready for the first step. Past bowed and removed the necklace of then. Future approached and smiled, loosening the armor of when. Now stood between them and did not feel small. It felt exact—as exact as water taking the shape of what holds it, as exact as the truth that does not need to hurry. The human exhaled and did not try to keep the breath. True freedom comes from allowing even the air to be shared with the world.

The last lesson was simple. Nothing is healed by being unlived. To refuse feeling is to choose a life made of frozen doors. To enter feeling is to find out the doors were never locked. The River of Souls is not a place to escape or to conquer. It is the way through.

And so the realization clearly and luminously stayed:

You are not late to your life. The door you keep looking for is the space between your inhale and your exhale. Call it Now. Move forward completely, leaving nothing that still seeks attention. But before that - Here, the heart relearns how to breathe and finds courage to love anew—not as before, but as it can now.

REMEMBER :

The river moves. The bridge stands. The room is lit. And the present is wide enough for you.

My own story-