Time in a Room with no Clocks

Time feels different inside a juvenile center.

There are no clocks on the walls, no phones to check, no real markers of before or after. Time seems to stand still and move all at once. All we have is each other, the noise, the quiet, and the way each kid decides whether to let you in (or not).

Over the weeks, I’ve realized my place isn’t in the commotion but in the quieter corners, with the boys who hang back and watch first.

And that’s exactly where I found him: Joey (as I’ll call him here for privacy.)

The first time I met Joey, he was sitting alone in a corner reading. The only kid in the room holding a book. I walked up, said hi, and asked what he was reading. He stayed silent, extended his arm, and showed me the cover. No words.

A few weeks later, today, Joey and I ended up in a long discussion about the concept of time. You see, he doesn’t know it but he’s a natural writer and a deep thinker, though he doesn’t call himself one. His notebook holds more past than present pages full of memories, pain, and things he survived without knowing how. He calls them “songs” and honestly, they very well could be. They’re raw and honest.

As I was reading them, I told him how talented and transparent he was. But I also noticed how everything pointed backward. He wrote about his mistakes, his guilt, his past. So, I introduced something different.

I asked him if he’d ever heard the idea that time is a human made construct.

He looked at me and said, “Wait… what?”

For a second, I hesitated.

Not because he couldn’t understand, but because I realized these kids rarely get invited into conversations that treat them like thinkers and they are, they just aren’t spoken to that way often.

So, I continued.

“Yeah” I said. “People invented time. And if time is human made, that could mean that the past, present, and future are all happening at once.”

He squinted a little, trying to wrap his head around it. So I shifted the example.

“Ok, imagine your life is a book” I told him. “You know how a book has chapters, some you’ve already read, some you’re reading now, and some you haven’t gotten to yet. But all the chapters exist at the same time, right? The beginning, the middle, the end. They’re all already written. You just can’t read them at once.”

He nodded and I could tell he got it.

“So maybe the past, present, and future all exist at once” I repeated. “Maybe your future self already exists, he’s made it out of this place, he’s just a chapter you haven’t reached yet.”

His eyes softened and we stayed quiet for a little while.

Since he loves writing, I suggested he try something different:

Imagine stepping into his future self for a moment. The version of him who’s out, who’s free, who’s grown and healed and letting that young man write a letter to who he is today. Ask the questions he wishes someone had asked him. Offer the advice he knows he’ll need. Borrow a little hope from the man he’s trying to become.

And in that conversation, I was reminded again of how delicate and powerful these moments are. And how, in a place that has taken so much from them, what they often need most is someone who can see far enough ahead to imagine a future with them in it, a future they can start reaching for, even if for now it exists only through words on a page.

And that future can start with him. Not with me. Not with anyone else.
He has the fundamental right to imagine it and to work toward it.

I kept thinking about something I once read: that the brain can’t distinguish between reality and imagination and if that’s true, then imagination isn’t just daydreaming, it’s rehearsal. It’s practice. It’s proof of possibility.

Something as simple and accessible as imagination, something nobody can take away becomes its own form of power and freedom. A place where a kid who feels stuck can start trying on a different version of himself long before life gives him the chance to live it.

A place where the future becomes something he can touch, even if only in his mind at first. And maybe the task doubled as something else (…) a way to pass time imaginatively but with intention, in a place where it feels like time barely moves.