You might think these people don't understand how precious time is. But they do. They tell the people they love most that they would gladly give up some of their own years for them. And they actually do give their years away — they just don't realize they're doing it. They waste their time in ways that help no one, not even the people they claim to love. The problem is they can't see where their time comes from or where it goes. So they don't mind wasting what they can't see. But here's the truth: no one will ever give you back those lost years. No one can restore them. Once your life starts moving, it won't stop or reverse. It won't let you undo what you've already done.
Yet you have no reason to suppose that they do not know how dear a thing time is: they are wont to say to those whom they especially love that they are ready to give them a part of their own years. They do give them, and know not that they are giving them; but they give them in such a manner that they themselves lose them without the others gaining them. They do not, however, know whence they obtain their supply, and therefore they are able to endure the waste of what is not seen: yet no one will give you back your years, no one will restore them to you again: your life will run its course when once it has begun, and will neither begin again or efface what it has done.