Life Is Short: Why Waiting for “Later” Holds You Back

Think of the trip you keep for “later”. The one in a folder on your phone, with the tabs still open. Later is a comfortable word, and most of the time it does no harm. Then something happens. A death, an illness, a call you did not expect. And the word changes weight. Why does loss make us want to live now? Because it breaks the quiet belief that time is guaranteed. What remains is a clearer question: what matters now?

I want to write about this with care. I am not a therapist, and nothing here replaces one. I will share what the research says, where it is mixed, and a few gentle ideas about how to stop postponing the things that already matter to you.

Why we assume time is guaranteed

“Later” lets us delay a decision without facing the fact that life can change without warning. Loss usually corrects this fast. Something that felt far away suddenly feels close. Things that seemed urgent a week before can lose all their weight, while ordinary moments, a conversation, a walk, a quiet morning, start to feel enormously important.

Once the illusion of unlimited time breaks, a strange kind of clarity often follows. The question moves from “what should I eventually do” to “what actually matters now”. That shift can be uncomfortable. It can also be the most honest thing that happens to us in years.

Grief is not a task you finish first

After a loss, letting yourself feel good again can feel complicated, almost disloyal. There is often an unspoken idea that joy should wait for the right time, for grief to be “finished”. But grief rarely finishes on a schedule.

Researchers have described this in a helpful way. The dual process model of coping with bereavement, proposed by Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut in 1999, says that healthy coping is not a straight line through sadness. People move back and forth between facing the loss and taking care of everyday life, and a break from grief is part of coping, not a failure of it. The authors proposed it to replace the older idea that you must “work through” grief before moving on. A later systematic review concluded that the model represents the experience of bereavement well, while noting that it needs more testing.

There is also research on laughter. The psychologist George Bonanno reported that more than half of the bereaved people in his studies showed positive emotion while talking about their loss, and that genuine smiles and laughter predicted less grief over time. His work is debated, and a study of students after 9/11 did not find that laughter predicted better mental health. So I would not read it as a rule. I read it as permission: sadness and a moment of ease can sit side by side.

Meaning in ordinary moments

We usually connect meaning with big, obvious moments. In real life, it appears more often in ordinary ones, the kind that are easy to miss when your attention is always pointed at some future goal. Stillness helps. It gives you room to notice small things: a change in the light, a softer tone in someone's voice, a small lift in your own mood that you had not noticed until it was already there.

You do not need a formal practice for this. You only need your attention to stay with what is happening, instead of running ahead to what might happen next. We wrote more about this in the illusion of someday, and about how people bring their own rituals to the water in grief, the ocean and ritual.

Does time outside really help with grief and wellbeing?

There is some evidence that time in nature is linked with wellbeing. A 2019 study led by Mathew White at the University of Exeter used survey data from about 19,800 adults in England. People who spent at least 120 minutes a week in nature were significantly more likely to report good health and higher psychological wellbeing than people who did not go at all. It did not matter if those minutes came in one long visit or several short ones. The study is observational, so it shows an association, not a cause, and the authors said more research is needed.

I mention it because it is a modest, honest claim. A walk by the sea does not cure anything. But for many people, time outdoors can be one small, kind part of finding their feet again. The ocean is only one place where this can happen. A park, a river or a quiet street at dawn may do the same.

When grief needs more than a walk

It is worth saying clearly that some grief needs professional care. Prolonged grief disorder is recognised in the ICD-11, where the grief reaction must last at least six months, and in the DSM-5-TR, which uses twelve months after the loss for adults. If your grief stays intense and stops you from functioning long after the loss, or if you have thoughts of harming yourself, please talk to a doctor or a therapist, or contact your local emergency or crisis line. A trip, even a good one, is not a treatment.

Letting your world open again, slowly

Loss often makes the world smaller for a while. Routines become simple, and energy goes into getting through the days. That is normal, and it does not last forever. A clearer sense of time's limits can make people more open to paths they had once called impractical.

This rarely means anything dramatic. It usually happens slowly: a different way of spending a weekend, more time for one relationship, a trip you postponed for years finally booked. If the trip is to the sea, a tropical travel kit with packing cubes and a refill bottle makes the planning feel lighter, and a rash guard is a simple way to protect your shoulders from the sun in the water. Those are details, not the point. The point is the decision.

Travel has an environmental cost, and I do not want to pretend otherwise. A meaningful trip is often a slower one: fewer flights, longer stays, and local people paid fairly. That is how we try to build ours, in small groups of six at most, with unhurried days where any guest may skip any activity, and where wildlife is never chased or touched.

If this stirred something and you are ready to stop waiting for the right time, you can explore our upcoming retreats, or first read how we think about ethical freediving. And if “later” is still the honest answer for now, that is fine too. Sometimes the most important shift is the quiet decision to stop postponing what already feels important.

Questions people ask

Wildlife encounters are never guaranteed and never forced. Ocean Calling works only with vetted, ethical local operators, and every animal is free to approach, or not, entirely on its own terms.