23 Minutes

Time isn’t real. Not in the way we pretend it is.

There’s the standardized version, the clocks, the calendars, the alarms, the mechanical system we all agree to participate in. But underneath that, time bends. It stretches and shrinks depending on who we are, what we value, and what we allow ourselves to feel.

I thought about that inside Biblioteca Vasconcelos, a place people call a “mega library.” I don’t know if that’s a technical term, but it fits. It’s massive and stacked with floors and a fully open concept. A place where thousands of stories hang above you while the world moves quietly below and around you. I wandered those stacks for a while, suspended in a kind of weightless silence where minutes softened around the edges.

And then, like life always does, the moment snapped back into place the second I walked out onto the cement courtyard.

What would you do with 23 minutes?

That’s the question that surfaced as I stepped into the sunlight, plants pushing themselves through cracked concrete like they were trying to escape the noise of the city.

I had just left the library. A security guard had given me directions to a café on my list. As he talked, I pulled up Google Maps to make sure I was heading the right way. He glanced over my shoulder, saw the little walking icon lit up, and froze.

“Twenty-three minutes!?” he said, looking at me like I’d made a mistake. “Sir, do you know you have it on walking directions? You can take a taxi and be there sooner.”

I laughed.
“No, I like walking. It’s a good way to see the city.”

He blinked twice.
“But sir… twenty-three minutes? You have twenty-three minutes just to walk?”

I paused, confused at first.
“Yeah,” I said. “I have plenty of time to walk.”

But as I made my way toward the café, his reaction started to echo in my head.

What made twenty-three minutes feel impossible to him?
And how many of us quietly feel the same?

We build our days around routines. Morning routines, work blocks, evening rituals. We plan, optimize, schedule, compress. We treat time like a currency we’re constantly in debt to.

And somewhere in that process, the simple act of existing starts to feel like a luxury.

There’s a weighted blanket of pressure hanging over all of us.
Every minute that isn’t accounted for adds weight.
Every pause invites guilt.
Every breath we take without “earning it” feels like we’re breaking some invisible rule.

That little voice whispers:

You should be doing something.
You didn’t do enough today.
You’re falling behind.
You don’t get to relax yet.
Not yet. Not now. Not you.

No wonder the guard couldn’t imagine spending twenty-three whole minutes walking nowhere special.

No wonder so many of us can’t either.

Maybe the point isn't productivity. Maybe the point is presence. 

Maybe, and I’m saying this as someone who constantly struggles to slow down, we need our own version of twenty-three minutes.

Twenty-three minutes of nothing planned.
Twenty-three minutes without a goal.
Twenty-three minutes to walk, or breathe, or people-watch, or sit in the sun like a lizard absorbing warmth.
Twenty-three minutes to be a human being rather than a human in motion.

Maybe time bends for us when we let it.
Maybe it becomes softer, kinder, more forgiving.
Maybe the minutes expand when we give them permission.