For many years during college and after graduation, I felt like I

The writer, comedian, and visionary artist Julio Torres once shared these deeply human words: “For many years during college and after graduation, I felt like I was against the clock and I had to figure out things very quickly or else I wouldn't be able to stay in the U.S. To top it all off, there was the added difficulty that my dream life wasn't to secure a stable job. I wanted to live a creative life.” Within this confession lies a truth both modern and eternal — the struggle between survival and self-expression, between the demands of the world and the quiet, burning voice of one’s own calling. It is the cry of every soul that has ever stood at the edge of uncertainty, daring to build a life not of comfort, but of meaning.

To feel “against the clock” is to live with the heavy breath of urgency pressing against one’s chest — a reminder that time, opportunity, and circumstance are not always generous companions. For Torres, as for countless dreamers before him, the clock was more than a metaphor; it was a boundary between belonging and exile, between having a home and being cast adrift. Yet even as fear tightened its grip, he carried within him the defiant fire of creation — the belief that a life worth living is not one of mere survival, but of expression, beauty, and truth. His words remind us that the creative soul often walks a harder road, for it does not seek safety, but freedom.

This struggle — between worldly necessity and inner calling — is as ancient as civilization itself. The philosopher Socrates, centuries ago, faced a similar choice. When commanded to abandon his teaching and conform to the laws of the state, he refused, choosing death over silence. He could have lived safely, but not truthfully. His courage echoes through the ages, as does Torres’s: both refused to trade the authenticity of the soul for the comfort of security. Each teaches that the pursuit of a creative or meaningful life often means walking the razor’s edge between risk and revelation.

Torres’s experience also reflects the immigrant’s journey — a story written in countless hearts throughout time. To build a life in a foreign land, to chase dreams under the weight of uncertainty, is to balance between faith and fear. Like Frida Kahlo, who painted through agony and confinement, or Albert Einstein, who fled oppression to seek intellectual freedom, Torres’s struggle is the modern echo of an ancient truth: the pursuit of purpose often demands endurance in the face of instability. What separates the artist, the thinker, and the dreamer from the fearful is not the absence of doubt, but the courage to act despite it.

When Torres says, “My dream life wasn’t to secure a stable job. I wanted to live a creative life,” he voices the eternal longing of the spirit — the desire to bring forth something that did not exist before. Stability may comfort the body, but creativity feeds the soul. Yet the two often wage war within us. The modern world rewards safety, not imagination; it praises predictability, not passion. But the ancients would remind us: even the tree that bends to every wind never grows tall. To choose a creative life is to choose a life of uncertainty, but also of profound depth — where the hours may be harder, but the meaning runs infinitely deeper.

The lesson, then, is both tender and powerful: do not rush your becoming. When you feel the clock pressing upon you, remember that creation unfolds in its own divine rhythm. Fear not if your path is uncertain — every great journey begins in darkness. What matters is that you keep walking toward the light of your own truth. Secure what you must to survive, but never silence the part of you that seeks to create, for that is the part that gives life its soul.

And so, let the words of Julio Torres stand as a testament for all who struggle between duty and dream: the creative life is not an easy life, but it is a sacred one. The world may urge you to hurry, to conform, to chase safety — but the wise know that time bends for those who follow their purpose. Build steadily, dream boldly, and nourish the flame within you. For the one who dares to create, even under pressure, even against the clock, does not merely survive the world — they remake it.