Are we there yet?

I can still feel it, the restlessness in the backseat. Legs swinging. Forehead pressed against the window. Watching the world blur by while my mom drove me to a sleepover I’d been thinking about all week.

“Are we there yet?” I wasn’t asking because I cared about the answer. I was asking because I couldn’t stand being here. In the car. In the in-between. In the moment that wasn’t the moment I was waiting for.

I wanted there. The destination. The thing I’d built up in my head as better than this boring stretch of road with my mom and the radio and nothing happening.

And here’s what nobody tells you when you’re young: You never stop asking that question. You just aim it at different rides.

Are we there yet? It’s the job you’re grinding toward, convinced that once you land it, everything will feel different. It’s the city you’re planning to move to, the relationship you’re waiting to find, the version of yourself you think you’ll become once you finally figure it out.

You keep pressing your face to the glass, impatient for the view to change. Except it never does. Not the way you think.

Because every there you arrive at just becomes another here. The job starts. The city becomes routine. The relationship settles. And you realize the destination you were chasing was just another stop on a road that doesn’t end. The map keeps going. The question keeps coming back.

Until one day—maybe it’s thirty-something years later, maybe it’s when someone you love is gone, maybe it’s just a random Tuesday—you realize the question has changed.

It’s quieter now.

How much longer do I get to be here?

And suddenly, the car ride with your mom wasn’t the thing you had to endure to get to the sleepover. It was the thing.

The weekly allowance. The curfew. The boredom of being fourteen. The conversations you half-listened to because you were too busy waiting for your life to start. 

That was your life.

And now there’s no curfew. No one’s handing you an allowance. You have all the freedom you once fantasized about.

And all you want is more time.

So you work hard—not to arrive, but to create moments worth slowing down for. To buy back time. To spend it like it actually means something.

And the only way to honor that is to be here.

Not in the backseat, fidgeting and asking when we’ll arrive. Because the only real destination is presence. And the best present is being here for it.

The ride is the thing.

And no, we’re not there yet.

We never will be.

But we’re here.

And that’s the whole point.