I have never liked the words “soon” and “later.” For as long as I can remember, I have treated them almost like empty space in a sentence. “I’ll do it soon.” “We’ll talk later.” “Things will change soon.” “Later, when the time is right.” None of these words tell me anything. Tomorrow is something I can understand. Next Tuesday is something I can understand. Even “I don’t know when” is honest enough for me to understand and it is acceptable. But soon and later have always felt strangely unreal, because they create the impression of a future without actually creating one, even though the person who says those words seem very responsible and reliable - I promise soon you are going to be happy. They allow us to place something somewhere outside the present moment and then feel as though we have done something with it.  You get the temporary emotional reward... We haven’t done anything with that promise. We have simply moved it out of sight. We lied to ourselves and potentially others. 

There is a wonderful moment when Simon asks Jesus whether something will happen soon, and Jesus begins teasing him with the word itself. "What does soon mean? A few hours? A few days? Years? A hundred years? A thousand years?" Then He tells Simon to ask His Father in Heaven what a thousand years means to Him. I laughed when I watched it because this has always been my problem with soon: soon has no measurable existence. It may mean tomorrow to the person waiting and ten years to the person promising. And both can continue using exactly the same word... 

Of course, there is something beautiful in the spiritual meaning of that exchange. We do not own time. We cannot demand that God operate according to our calendars, and we certainly cannot see the entire architecture of our lives from the small point in time where we happen to be standing. There are things whose timing remains mysterious. There are seeds underground that cannot be pulled upward simply because we have grown tired of waiting. There are processes that have their own gestation. In that sense, surrendering our obsession with when can be an act of faith. But I have also come to understand that spiritual surrender and human postponement are very different things. “Soon” can describe our inability to know God's timing, but it can also become a very convenient hiding place when a human being does not want to make a choice... 

We can live inside that hiding place for years. I will leave soon. I will tell the truth later. I will start writing when I have more time. I will change my work when I feel more secure. I will finally have that conversation. I will choose. I will become. I will live. Soon. Later. Someday. And something very strange happens psychologically when we speak this way: we begin to experience the future intention almost as if it were already a decision. We receive a small emotional reward from imagining the person we are going to become while remaining exactly where we are. “I am going to” begins quietly replacing I am.

This is why another conversation in the same episode affected me so much. Matthew is still carrying the weight of who he used to be, and Philip tells him something extraordinarily simple: “I was something else too. Once you’ve met the Messiah, ‘am’ is all that matters.” I had heard ideas like this many times before. Be present... Live in the now... You are not your past... I am! Oh, God, how many times I said this mantra to myself "I am" and nothing would happen... They were beautiful words, and I understood them intellectually. But I think only now I am beginning to understand I AM as a state rather than a sentence. am in my now is doing small things.. and those small things create a life... my life! 

There is enormous freedom in I am, because the past speaks a completely different grammatical language. The past says: I was. I failed. I stayed. I betrayed myself. I chose badly. I loved someone who could not choose me. I remained somewhere too long. I wasted time. I should have known. I missed out. I should have left. I should have begun earlier. I should have become someone else. All of these things may contain truth. The past does not have to be rewritten, spiritualized or made beautiful in order for us to become free of it. What happened, happened. What I chose, I chose. What someone else chose, they chose. But “I was” is information. It is not an instruction.

This may be one of the most radical forms of personal freedom: my previous choice does not have the authority to make my present choice for me. Other people may continue to know me through my history. They may remember what I did ten years ago, what I believed, whom I loved, what I tolerated, what I accepted, what I failed to do. Their image of me may remain frozen there. Sometimes we do the same thing to ourselves. We become the most devoted archivists of our own identity, constantly presenting evidence for why we must continue being the person we have already been. But the person standing here today is allowed to make a choice that the person of yesterday could not make. I was is history. I am is agency.

There is another line from Philip that I find equally beautiful. Matthew is worried about everything he missed, everything he does not know, all the time he believes he has lost. Philip tells him, “You didn’t lose any time. It just got rearranged.” I keep thinking about that sentence because so much human suffering comes from comparing the life we actually lived with an imaginary life that exists only in our minds. If I had understood sooner. If I had chosen another marriage, another career, another road... If I had started this work ten years ago. If I had awakened earlier. We can spend another ten years grieving the ten years we believe we lost.

Maybe time can be rearranged. Maybe the years I once considered wasted become the material from which something else is eventually built. Maybe experience does not have to justify itself by being pleasant or successful in order to become useful. The wrong road can teach us to recognize the right one. A long silence can eventually teach us the cost of withholding truth. Years spent abandoning ourselves can make the moment of returning to ourselves unmistakable. This does not mean we need to romanticize suffering or remain inside something simply because perhaps one day it will become meaningful. Quite the opposite. If the past has given me something, perhaps the way I honor that gift is by finally using it now.

And this is where soon becomes dangerous again. Because even a beautiful teaching about divine timing can be turned into an excuse for human paralysis. We can call fear “waiting for the right time.” We can call avoidance “patience” or "premature"...  We can call indecision “surrender.” We can wait for signs, permission, certainty, another conversation, another season, another person to change. Sometimes waiting truly is an action... seeds do need darkness, fermentation needs time, grief cannot be rushed, and some answers ripen slowly. But there is also a moment when the fruit is already hanging from the branch. Waiting beyond that moment is no longer cultivation. Eventually, the fruit begins to rot.

I think this is why I have such a visceral response when another human being offers me soon. I no longer want to build my present life around someone else’s undefined future. “Soon I will decide.” “Soon I will be ready.” “Soon things will be different.” Perhaps they will. I do not need to declare that they never will. I simply cannot live now as though their soon has already happened. Their future remains theirs. My present belongs to me.

This distinction has become incredibly important to me. I can leave God the mystery of time without surrendering my own responsibility for the present. I can trust what is still unfolding while responding to what is already here. I do not need to know what my entire life will look like five years from now in order to tell the truth today. I do not need certainty about the destination in order to recognize the next honest step. Faith does not require me to pretend that the future has already arrived. Maybe faith asks something much harder: to stand completely inside the life that actually exists.

And maybe this is what I AM finally means to me. It is not an affirmation. It is not positive thinking. It is not pretending that the past never happened or convincing myself that the future will be wonderful. I am is the place where reality and choice meet. I am here. This is what exists. This is what I know. This is what I do not know. This is what I feel. This is what I have chosen until now. And from exactly here, without rewriting yesterday and without borrowing certainty from tomorrow, I can choose again.

The past says I was. The future says I will. Soon says not now. Later says not now. But life keeps asking a much simpler and much more uncomfortable question: Who are you now?

That is why “I am” suddenly sounds completely different to me. I used to hear it as two ordinary words. Now I experience it almost as a location. The only location, in fact, where I have any real power. I cannot choose yesterday. I cannot choose from tomorrow. I cannot live inside someone else’s soon. I can remember the past, learn from it, grieve it, forgive it, even love it. I can dream about the future, prepare for it, pray for it and leave room for mysteries whose timing I cannot understand. But I can only create from here.

I am.

And for the first time, I understand why that is enough.