On Time That Does Not Exist
I am 18 years old. And I am just turning 33.
There is no contradiction in that.
For many people, these two sentences stand in obvious conflict. Within the logic of a linear world, one excludes the other. You are either 18 or 33. Something is either young or mature. Time either passes or it doesn’t. Yet my experience of existence has never fit into that axis. Not because I tried to challenge it intellectually, but because I never felt it internally.
For years, I have carried a deep, almost bodily conviction that time does not exist — at least not in the way we usually speak about it. Not as an objective, flowing river that carries us from point A to point B, from birth to death, from youth to old age. To me, time is a human illusion — a construct created to organize experience, but not necessarily to describe the truth of existence.
When I try to locate the “passage of time” within myself, I cannot find it. I do not feel anything in me moving linearly. I do not experience existence as a sequence of clearly defined stages that truly end. What I sense instead is continuity. Constant presence. The same “I am” that exists regardless of dates, numbers, or calendars. That is why 18 is not my past and 33 is not my future. They coexist, because there is no line between them.
This experience is not the result of philosophical play or a desire to be controversial. It is something primal, intuitive, almost organic. As if the body and consciousness never learned to perceive themselves through the lens of time. As if the organism itself does not recognize time as a real axis, but rather as an external narrative — one that can be adopted, or not.
I am aware that for many people, this way of thinking feels unsettling. Extreme rationalists — those who need the world to be clear-cut, measurable, and enclosed within rigid frameworks — often react to such ideas with hostility. People who speak about the illusory nature of time are sometimes labeled as detached from reality, immature, or even as individuals who should “seek professional help.” History is full of examples of those who questioned the dominant worldview being silenced not through argument, but through diagnosis.
And yet history teaches us something else as well: the boundary between “madness” and “discovery” often lies exactly where our available tools of measurement end. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. This simple sentence carries enormous weight. The fact that we cannot yet measure something does not mean it does not exist. It only means that we do not yet know how.
Quantum physics is one of the most striking examples of how fragile so-called “obvious truths” can be. Classical Newtonian physics described the world for centuries as a stable, predictable mechanism. Time flowed uniformly, independent of the observer. Cause always preceded effect. Objects existed “as they were,” regardless of whether anyone observed them. This model was logical, elegant, and extremely useful — but only within a certain scale.
Quantum mechanics overturned that order completely. It revealed that the observer is not neutral. That the act of observation affects what is observed. That particles do not exist in one definite state until they are measured. That reality at its deepest level behaves not like a machine, but like a field of possibilities. And time — instead of being an absolute — begins to resemble a relationship. A function dependent on the frame of reference, on the observer, on the method of measurement.
Some interpretations of quantum mechanics go even further, suggesting that time is not a fundamental property of the universe at all. That it does not exist on its own, but emerges from correlations between events, from processes, from the human need to organize experience. There is no single “now” that flows equally for everyone. There are many “nows,” dependent on perspective. In this view, the passage of time ceases to be an objective fact and becomes an experience.
What sounds like heresy to some feels like a natural extension of an intuition humanity has carried for centuries. Mystical traditions spoke of this long before equations and laboratories existed. In those traditions, time was never a straight line, but a circle, a spiral, an eternal “now.” Mystical experiences almost always involve the dissolution of time — moments in which “before” and “after” lose all meaning.
What science began to articulate only in the twentieth century, spirituality had intuitively recognized thousands of years earlier. The language is different, but the direction is strikingly similar: reality is far more complex than our common-sense narratives allow us to believe. And time — the foundation upon which we build our entire social order — may be one of the greatest simplifications we have ever created.
I do not claim to “know for certain.” I claim that the question of time remains open. And my personal truth — grounded in experience, in observation of the body and consciousness — is that time is not a real causal force for me. It is a story. Useful, but not necessary. Helpful in organizing the world, but not in describing its essence.
This conviction changes everything. The way I think about age, about aging, about life stages. If time is an illusion, then age is one as well. And if age is an illusion, many of the fears attached to it — fear of passing, of loss, of “too late” — begin to lose their grip. Not because biological processes disappear, but because the relationship to them changes.
The body ceases to be a carrier of numbers and becomes a space of experience.
And it is from this place — from the conviction that time is not what we have been taught it is — that everything else grows. My relationship with the number 33. My relationship with birthdays. My relationship with love, manifestation, and the choice to live a life that is not a compromise.
Because if time does not exist, everything that truly matters happens now.
33 as a Gateway, Not an Age
If time does not exist in the way we were taught to think about it, then numbers lose their power. They stop being verdicts, stop being boundaries, stop being measures of who we are and where we are “supposed to be.” In this sense, 33 is not an age for me. It is a sign. A symbol. A point where meanings converge — meanings that have nothing to do with a birth certificate.
For a long time, I have felt that the number 33 carries a quality entirely different from others. Not because it is “beautiful” or mathematically exceptional, but because it appears at the intersection of orders. In numerology, it is considered a master number — one that is not reduced, because its meaning does not lie in simplification. Thirty-three is not a sum. It is a whole. It does not lead to something smaller, but to something fuller.
In symbolic traditions, 33 is often associated with embodiment — with the moment when knowledge ceases to be theory and becomes lived experience. With the transition from “I understand” to “I live in alignment with what I understand.” It is not a number of beginnings or endings. It is a threshold. A gateway you pass through — not to leave something behind, but to stop being divided.
That is why the cultural narrative that treats 33 as a moment of “settling down,” “becoming serious,” or “entering adulthood” understood as resignation feels so foreign to me. As if with this number one should bid farewell to lightness, curiosity, and fire. As if something were meant to end. My experience is the opposite. Nothing ends. Something integrates.
Thirty-three does not take 18 away from me. It stabilizes it. It allows it to remain without chaos. Eighteen not as immaturity, but as a state of openness, freshness, and freedom from the weight of history. A quality that can be lost very early if one believes that “growing up” means closing down — and one that can be preserved for a very long time if one chooses awareness instead.
For me, 18 and 33 are not contradictory. They are complementary. One is the impulse of life, the other its grounding. One is curiosity, the other responsibility. One asks “what else?”, the other answers “I know what I do not want.” Together, they create a state in which there is no longer a need to run away or rush ahead. A state in which one can be both alive and stable.
In many spiritual traditions, 33 appears as a moment of initiation — not spectacular or external, but quiet. An initiation that requires no witnesses or rituals. An initiation into truth with oneself. Into living without dissonance between what one feels and what one does. Into no longer needing to prove anything to the world.
It is not accidental that this number is often referred to as the “age of Jesus.” Not in a religious sense, not as dogma, but as a symbol. A symbol of the transition from teaching with words to teaching with presence. From speaking about truth to embodying truth in action. This is not a moment of triumph. It is a moment of responsibility for who one is.
That is why 33 is not a celebration for me in the classical sense. It is not an occasion for summaries or reckoning. It is rather a moment of sharpening. As if something within me said: now you know. Now you cannot pretend that you do not know. Not from a place of severity, but from a place of clarity.
And clarity is not heavy. On the contrary — it brings relief. Because with it disappears the need to compare, to rush, to adjust to someone else’s timeline. The pressure of “I should be somewhere else” dissolves. If time is an illusion, there is no “too late” and no “too early.” There is only what is appropriate to who I am now.
Thirty-three as a gateway does not lead to aging. It leads to embodiment. To inhabiting oneself more fully. To reconciling fire with stillness. To no longer choosing between passion and stability. This is not compromise. This is integration.
And that is precisely why this number resonates so strongly with my relationship to birthdays. If 33 is a gateway and not an age, then there is nothing to celebrate in a calendar sense. There is no cake that could mark it. No candles that could capture the meaning of the passage. This happens internally. Quietly. Without witnesses.
From here begins the real conversation about birthdays — about why for some they are a celebration, and for others a source of tension. About why not everyone wants to celebrate them. And about the fact that a lack of celebration does not always mean a lack of gratitude. Sometimes it means deep alignment with one’s own experience.
Because if 33 is a gateway, it is not meant to be decorated.
It is meant to be crossed.
Why Birthdays Are Not a Celebration for Everyone
Birthdays are commonly regarded as one of the most obvious rituals. A day that is supposed to be pleasant, joyful, bright. A day when one is expected to feel happy, accept wishes, and remain at the center of attention. And yet psychology has long known that for many people birthdays are difficult days — filled with tension, ambivalence, and sometimes even pain. The problem is that we rarely talk about it, because cultural narratives leave little room for such experiences.
A reluctance toward birthdays is often interpreted as a lack of gratitude, pessimism, or an inability to enjoy life. In reality, however, it is very often a logical psychological response to lived experience. Birthdays are never experienced in a vacuum. They are embedded in relationships, in history, in the ways we were seen, treated, and acknowledged — or not.
In my life, birthdays were never days I remembered with warmth. I struggle to point to any that felt genuinely good. There was always something that cracked. Someone was absent. Someone said something hurtful. Someone turned the day into a stage for their own emotions, needs, or dramas. Instead of feeling seen, I found myself managing other people’s moods. Instead of celebration — tension.
Psychology refers to this as the accumulation of relational micro-traumas. Not one dramatic event, but a series of small fractures that, repeated over the years, teach the nervous system one simple thing: this day is not safe. Better not to expect. Better not to stand out. Better not to assign meaning, because meaning ends in disappointment.
Over time, I stopped expecting anything. And then — almost imperceptibly — I stopped attaching importance to birthdays altogether. Not as an act of rebellion, not as a demonstrative resignation. Rather, in a quiet, organic way, as if the psyche itself withdrew energy from a ritual that had never been nourishing. This was not cutting off. It was extinguishing.
From a psychological perspective, this is a healthy adaptive mechanism. When something repeatedly produces tension or pain, the organism learns not to invest resources in it. It stops counting, stops waiting, stops engaging. The problem arises only when we interpret this process as a deficit — as proof that “something is wrong with us,” or that we are incapable of joy.
But what if the opposite is true?
What if the reluctance toward birthdays is not a lack of joy, but a refusal to participate in a ritual that does not reflect one’s lived truth? What if it is not sadness, but coherence? What if it is a form of honesty with oneself — a refusal to pretend that something is a celebration simply because society says it should be?
For some, birthdays are days of love, attention, and tenderness. For others, they are confrontations with loneliness, unmet expectations, and relationships that failed to show up. For still others, they are simply empty gestures that evoke no emotion at all. Each of these responses is valid. None is “worse” than another. The difference lies not in sensitivity, but in history.
When the psychological layer is joined by the conviction that time itself is an illusion, the meaning of birthdays dissolves almost completely. If I do not experience life as a line, if I do not experience myself as “a year older,” then what exactly am I supposed to celebrate? Another number assigned to the body? Another confirmation of a narrative I do not believe in?
In this perspective, not celebrating birthdays is neither sad nor radical. It is neutral. It is a choice that requires no justification. Just as not everyone needs rituals to feel meaning, not everyone needs dates to feel existence.
Psychology also tells us something else that is crucial: the need to celebrate often has less to do with the date itself and more to do with the need to be seen. To be noticed. To matter. If this experience is available in everyday life, birthdays lose their singular importance. If it is not, the date becomes heavily charged. It turns into a test of relationships — and tests rarely bring relief.
In my case, birthdays never offered what I truly needed. And so, over time, they lost their significance. Not because I do not value life, but because I do not need one day a year to validate it. If time does not exist, existence does not require a stamp.
In this sense, my relationship with birthdays is a natural extension of my worldview. If 33 is a gateway and not an age, if time is an illusion and not an axis, then birthdays become just one of many stories one may choose to accept — or not. And opting out of that story does not mean a lack of gratitude. Sometimes it means deep alignment with one’s own experience.
Only from this place can one move forward — toward relationships, toward love, toward questions of whether a life without compromise is possible. But before that happens, one must allow a simple truth: not everyone celebrates the same things. And that is not a problem.
It is a difference of experience.
The Cost of Incoherence
Someone once said that you cannot have both passion and stability at the same time. That these two worlds exclude one another. That fire belongs to the beginning, and then comes “real life,” which consists of cooling down, getting used to things, and accepting that great emotions are reserved for youth or fiction. It sounds like a truth spoken in a calm, mature tone. Not loud, not dramatic — it simply settles inside you like dust. And many people take it as fact.
I never believed it. Not because I am naïve, but because I have always felt that this narrative has more to do with resignation than with reality. I believe it is possible to have love, desire, safety, and a home that is not an emotional storage unit but a living space. I believe stability does not have to mean emotional silence, and passion does not have to lead to chaos. But I also believe something far more difficult to accept: even if all of this is possible, it does not mean it will happen with everyone we meet along the way.
To build such a relationship, two people are needed who believe in the same thing. It is not enough for one person to be ready, aware, and open. It is not enough for one person not to fear closeness, not to avoid conversation, not to sabotage what is good. If on the other side there is someone who deeply believes that love must burn out, that passion is dangerous, or that stability equals emotional freezing, the relationship has no chance — no matter how strong the attraction may be.
There are moments when you meet someone and from the very beginning you feel that something is different. Silence is not awkward. You do not feel the need to adapt or perform. And then comes the moment that cannot be planned or accelerated. The first kiss. Suddenly something very concrete, very physical, very real happens. The body stops defending itself. The mind quiets for a moment. And a thought appears, surprising in its simplicity: he could be my husband.
This is not the thought of a romantic teenager or a projection into the future. It is a calm recognition. As if something inside you said: here, I do not need to protect myself. And in that exact second, hope returns. The hope you had almost managed to silence. The thought that maybe it really is possible to have everything. That what once felt like theory or fantasy might suddenly become real.
And at that very moment, time breaks.
The man gets abducted by a UFO.
There is no argument. No closing conversation. No clear signal. There is silence. Not dramatic silence, but disorienting silence. Just yesterday there was contact, presence, curiosity. Just a moment ago someone was holding your face and kissing you in a way that made you believe something was beginning. And then it is as if someone pulled the plug. He disappears.
Human beings do not tolerate empty spaces. The mind immediately tries to fill them. Rationalization begins. Maybe he is not ready. Maybe he is going through a difficult time. Maybe he is afraid because he cares. Maybe he needs space. Maybe it is not about me. We construct entire internal narratives to avoid one simple possibility: that he is simply not interested enough.
This is the moment when we often confuse maturity with resignation from truth. We explain someone’s lack of courage through empathy. We tell ourselves that he did not want to hurt us, so he disappeared. That silence was more “gentle” than an honest no. I believe the opposite. Disappearing is not gentle. It is convenient. It allows one to avoid confrontation, responsibility, and the discomfort of telling the truth.
Every adult has the right not to want a relationship. The right not to be interested. The right to change their mind. The right to realize that this is not it. Not everyone we kiss has to see us as a future wife or husband. That is normal. What is not normal is pretending that nothing happened and leaving another person in emotional suspension.
We live in times when contact has never been easier. Each of us carries a phone almost all day long. Writing one message takes a minute — sometimes less than watching a single short video. That is why silence is rarely accidental. Most often, it is a choice. And very often it does not stem from a lack of readiness, but from a lack of interest combined with a lack of courage to name it.
People say they do not want to hurt others. That they disappear because they do not know how to tell the truth. But the truth is that silence hurts more than one sentence. One honest “no, thank you, this is not it” gives you ground beneath your feet. It allows you to close the story. Disappearance leaves room for guessing, hope, and self-punishment.
And here we arrive at something crucial: people treat us the way we show them we can be treated. If we accept silence, we teach others that silence is acceptable. If we explain away a lack of engagement, we show that the minimum is enough for us. This is not an accusation. It is an observation. Clarity toward oneself is a form of self-respect. Clarity toward others is a form of decency.
I believe in manifestation, but not in its Instagram version. I do not believe that it is enough to want and visualize. I believe in coherence. In the idea that we attract not what we declare, but what we are internally ready for and capable of tolerating. If we say we want love based on presence, yet agree to absence, we send a contradictory signal. This is an energetic mismatch.
But there is another truth — far more difficult to accept. It is not always the other person who is the sole source of this mismatch. Sometimes we carry it within ourselves. Sometimes manifestations collapse not because someone else “could not hold us,” but because we were not yet fully coherent with what we claimed to want.
It is possible to want something and be afraid at the same time. To long for closeness while not being ready for its consequences. To say we want a stable, present love, and yet lack the inner capacity to truly receive it when it appears. This, too, is an energetic mismatch — just one that is far less comfortable to see, because it does not allow us to place all responsibility outside ourselves.
There is a sad truth in this, one we often understand only with time. Something fell apart because we ourselves did not yet have the appropriate vibration. We wanted it — and we were running from it at the same time. We were partly ready, and partly still protecting ourselves from being hurt. And although intellectually it seemed that we “already knew,” that we had “already worked through it,” the body and the emotional field were telling a different story.
We must be able to admit this to ourselves. Without self-punishment. Without shame. Without a narrative of failure. Rather as an act of maturity. Because it is only here that a gateway appears — one that leads forward. A gateway that cannot be crossed if we continue telling ourselves that everything was solely the world’s fault.
Sometimes we believe we are healed because we are in a vacuum. Because nothing triggers us. Because life feels calm, predictable, safe. In such a space, it is easy to mistake the absence of stimuli for readiness. And then something — or someone — arrives who truly touches depth. And suddenly it turns out that what felt like readiness was merely a lack of challenge.
We receive exactly what we said we wanted. And that is when the truth emerges: we cannot yet carry it. Closeness activates fear. Stability exposes unhealed places. The presence of another person does not soothe — it confronts. And this, too, is information. Not punishment. Not proof that something is wrong with us.
Manifestation is not wish fulfillment. It is a mirror of coherence. It shows us not what we desire at the level of declaration, but what we are truly ready for. And sometimes what collapses is not a lost opportunity, but protection from entering something we would not yet be able to sustain.
Only when we are able to see both the other person’s limitations and our own inconsistencies do we stop circling the same stories. We stop attracting what disappears. And we begin to become a place where what arrives can truly stay.
I still believe it is possible to have everything. But today I know — not with everyone. And that this is not a failure. It is selection. Maturity. Choosing oneself over illusion. If someone truly wants to be with us, we will know it. If someone does not want to — or cannot — basic decency should know how to say so.
And if it does not, then our task is not to rescue them from the cosmos of their fears. Our task is to stay on the ground. In truth. In coherence. With a heart that is open, but not naïve.
Because love that is meant for us will not require guessing.
It will be present.
A Tale of Endless Nights
Sometimes I think that the greatest misunderstanding we carry into adulthood is the belief that fairy tales are something we are meant to outgrow. That they belong to childhood, along with naivety, dreams, and the conviction that life can be both beautiful and safe. As if maturity were synonymous with resignation. As if realism required emotional dimming.
The tales of One Thousand and One Nights were not stories for children. They were stories about survival, about meaning, about sustaining life through significance. Scheherazade did not tell her stories to escape reality, but to endure it. Each night was an act of presence. Each story was a bridge to another “tomorrow.” Magic was not escapism — it was a tool for staying alive.
And that is precisely why I increasingly find myself asking a different question: does life really have to be a tale of one thousand and one nights? Or could it be a tale of endless nights?
Not in the sense of illusion. Not as a denial of difficulty. But as a conscious choice of a narrative in which meaning does not end when responsibility begins. In which love is not something one outgrows. In which passion and stability are not positioned on opposite sides of a divide.
When we look at reality through the lens of the quantum field, everything that exists first appears as possibility. As potential. Not as an event, but as probability. The world is not a collection of fixed facts, but a dynamic field of relationships. What manifests is not the only available option — it is one of many that could have taken form.
In this sense, a life without compromise is not a utopia. It is one of the possible states of being. Just like a relationship that holds both passion and safety. Just like a home that does not extinguish fire, but gives it structure. All of this exists within the field of potential — not as a promise for everyone, but as a possibility for those who are coherent with it.
And here we return to the essential condition: awareness.
I do not believe that an “ideal relationship” happens by accident. I believe it can be created by two people who are healed enough not to mistake intensity for danger, or calm for boredom. People who can be together without hiding behind roles, without games, without the need for dominance or control. People who do not expect the other to fill a void, because that void no longer exists.
This is not a vision of a relationship without conflict. It is a vision of a relationship in which conflict does not destroy the bond. In which conversation is not a threat. In which silence is not punishment. In which presence is a choice, not an obligation.
A tale of endless nights is not about ease. It is about integrity. About not having to shrink in order to feel safe. About not having to abandon dreams in order to build a home. About not betraying one’s own nature in order to be in relationship.
Perhaps this is what true adulthood actually means: not the loss of belief in magic, but the ability to stop confusing magic with illusion. To understand that what once seemed like a fairy tale was simply unattainable from a place of unconsciousness. And that what becomes possible requires presence, courage, and coherence.
If time is an illusion, if 33 is a gateway, if birthdays are only one of many narratives, if relationships collapse where courage or readiness is missing — all of this leads to a single conclusion: life does not have to be a series of compromises. It can be a process of inhabiting oneself more and more fully.
It can be a tale that does not end with the morning of reason. It can be a story in which each night is not an escape, but a choice. In which love does not vanish without a word. In which what arrives stays, because it has found a space capable of holding it.
I do not know if everything can be measured. I do not know if everything can be proven. But I know that a life lived in alignment with oneself has a different quality. Denser. Truer. And that a tale of endless nights is not a fantasy — it is a decision not to settle for anything less than truth.
Today, I am turning 33.
And I have never been more aware of myself, my boundaries, and what I truly want. What I want is simple and uncompromising: for my life to be a tale of endless nights. Not as an escape from reality, but as its fullest expression. A life with depth and stability, with magic and everyday presence, with love that stays.
I believe the world can become better if we choose to become better ourselves — and I will always stand as an advocate for a more conscious, more humane tomorrow.
And I am not settling for less.
I am sharing this not as a confession, and not as a complaint. I chose this situation as an example because it revealed something essential: how manifestations sometimes fall apart not as punishment, but as information. As a consequence of inner incoherence — of wanting something while still being afraid to fully inhabit it. Of longing for presence without yet being entirely integrated with what presence demands.
Sometimes what disappears does so not because it was wrong, but because it arrived too early — or because it asked us to become someone we were still in the process of becoming. And sometimes the role of such moments is not to give us what we want, but to ask a different question altogether: will you choose yourself when someone else does not choose you?
This question does not apply only to love. It appears in work, in friendships, in creative paths, in every place where validation is external and rejection feels personal. And each time it appears, it quietly tests the same thing: whether we remember who we are when we are not being selected, mirrored, or confirmed from the outside.
The universe does not always respond by giving. Sometimes it responds by removing. Not to diminish us, but to see if we will abandon ourselves in the absence of recognition — or remain aligned with our own truth.
That is why the most important choice is not the one we make when we are wanted, but the one we make when we are not. Whether we collapse into doubt, or stay rooted in who we know ourselves to be. Whether we shrink our vision, or protect it. Whether we give up on our inner narrative — or continue to live it quietly, without witnesses.
Happiness cannot be outsourced. It cannot depend on someone staying, choosing us, or validating our worth. It has to be anchored within — otherwise every disappearance becomes a threat, and every rejection a verdict.
This is why I keep choosing the same thing, again and again: not to resign from depth, not to abandon meaning, not to forget myself when something falls away. No matter the context, no matter the outcome, I refuse to trade my inner coherence for temporary approval.
Maybe that is why this reflection arrives on my birthday. Maybe it is the threshold of 33. Or maybe it is simply the moment when certain things can no longer be unseen. I have learned not to lower my gaze when something ends, but to keep walking with quiet certainty. Because when you live in integrity, loss changes its meaning. What leaves does not take anything from you. It only reveals who no longer belongs.
Integrity does not protect you from endings. It protects you from forgetting who you are when they happen.
I choose myself.
And I choose, still, a tale of endless nights.
Love,
Laura
