We have all felt time compress. A three-hour exam passes in what feels like twenty minutes. A weekend with someone we love vanishes before we unpack our bags. And then there are the opposite moments, the ones that seem to hold still. A conversation that changes how we see ourselves. A morning walk where the light hits a building and suddenly we notice a city we have lived in for years.

Camus is pointing to something specific here. When his character begins living “in his own presence,” time does not simply speed up or slow down. It expands. Each hour contains multitudes because he is actually there for it, fully inhabiting the experience rather than sleepwalking through it.

Most of us lose enormous stretches of our lives to distraction. We scroll through the morning, worry through the afternoon, and plan through the evening. We arrive at the end of a day, a month, a year, and wonder where it went. The answer is simple: we were somewhere else while it was happening.

The remedy is not some grand act of willpower. It is just presence. Putting the phone down during a meal. Listening to a friend without rehearsing your reply. Letting yourself feel bored without reaching for a screen.

When you live in your own presence, there is no shortage of time. There is only the astonishing fact that each hour contains a world, if you are there to notice it.