There is a time to lift the biggest and heaviest weights—preferably somewhere close to one’s athletic peak when the body is tuned just right and the speed of recovery is at its fastest, when the motivation for doing hard training is high, or when the discipline needed to complete gruelling and monotonous workouts is nigh unshakeable.

And there is a time for light workouts. This time occurs more often than one thinks.

There is a time to run further for that extra mile or faster for that last gasp sprint to the finish line.

And there is a time to stay at home. Punishing, miserable weather really does not add anything to any workout. Like, fam, go home. (Seriously, go home.)

There is a time for restrictive dieting—when it is possible to still get through one’s day with a modified and reduced calorie intake, when it is required to shed weight (because, really, this is the only way to lose weight: by doing the opposite action to the thing that added on the weight in the first place).

And there is a time to eat all of the chocolate one can get their hands on. This, to anyone who lives in the modern world, with all of its stresses, is more often than one thinks. (Hear! Hear!)

There is a time to quit. Now, tomorrow, whenever.

But—and this is as true as the blue of the sky, the green of the grass, the wetness of water, the gravity of the Earth’s spin, and the shine of the stars—there is never enough time to continue.

Or to restart.

The remedy then, is to keep on going, to slow down but not to stop.

There is a time, and this—right here, right now—is the place.

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Rémy Ngamije is an award-winning Rwandan-born Namibian author, editor, publisher, photographer, literary educator, and entrepreneur. He is the founder of The Forge.