I once heard that it takes about eight minutes and twenty seconds for the light from the sun to reach earth. All those light particles hurtle at almost unimaginable speeds from the bug burning star almost 93 million miles away. Just to hit someone’s cheek or the leaf of a tree or the window of a train headed far away. But that’s all old light. New light, well, that’s just being born. And it will hit that same cheek, or that same leaf, or that same window in approximately eight minutes and twenty seconds.

And that’s all well and good. But what if the sun stopped producing the light that makes our fragile existence possible? Just stopped burning, like a candle in a hurricane. That continuous flow of light would cease. The old light would still rush toward us, fixed on its path, falling toward the earth. But new light wouldn’t be coming to replace that old light once it had reached its destination. In eight minutes and twenty seconds, our earth would go dark. The world as we know it would be changed forever.

But we’d have that time, just over eight minutes. Those 500 seconds. A delay. One frozen moment, the calm before the storm.

But it’s not just one moment, is it?

It’s 2,000 human lives just beginning. It’s another 875 human lives coming to a close.

That’s enough time for billions of memories.

Eight minutes and twenty seconds is enough time for a reader to finish a book, or an artist to finish a masterpiece. It’s enough time for a runner to finish a race, or a tired athlete to take a shower. It’s enough time for a musician to reach their big break, or for an addict to have one last dose of their beloved substance. It’s enough time for a student to finish an essay labored upon for countless hours, just in time for it to become obsolete.

It’s enough time to share a laugh with friends, to share a hug with a family member. It’s enough time to sit crying alone, or fall victim to a deadly heart attack. It’s enough time to listen to news that will change a life, for better or for worse.

500 seconds is enough time for a kettle to boil. It’s enough time to get that hole-in-one the golfer’s been dreaming of, it’s enough time to uncover the evidence of an unfaithful spouse. It’s enough to for two young lovers to kiss for the very first time. It’s enough time for a distressed family to hear that the only option for a relative is to try and make them as comfortable as possible.

Eggs would break, glasses would shatter, cell phones would be doomed to drop on sidewalks. Mice would fall prey to foxes, foxes would fall prey to hunters. A mother dog would lick her pups for the first time. A moth would die trying to obtain the light from within the bulb, a fly would be caught in the web of a spider. A genius might discover the next major scientific breakthrough, a young soldier might kill someone for the very first time.

Eight minutes and twenty seconds.

It’s enough time for a billion smiles, a million laughs. It’s enough time for countless miracles. It’s enough time for countless disasters.

It’s a fire burned out, it’s a clock finished chiming, it’s a crashed motorcycle, it’s a cup of spilt milk.

It’s enough for a species to go extinct.

It’s enough time for a small child to eat an ice cream cone.

The world would go dark. But we’d have that precious delay, that frozen moment in time.

Most would say that 500 seconds couldn’t possibly matter. But it can.

The sun could have gone out eight minutes and seventeen seconds ago and we would have no way of knowing and nothing we could do about it. What’s important is to make those last seconds of light count.

Three seconds is still enough time to say, “I love you.”