As I approach a quarter century of living, I have noticed a trend during my daily life; an appearance of tinges and pangs that are new to me. They are ephemeral, a blink of my mind’s eye, but carry the weight of something much greater. Thoughts shoot through my mind, often triggered but sometimes unearthed by a train of thought taking a scenic route.
I have long been susceptible to the traditional reminders of a life lived; a forgotten song coming alive again or a return to a place well traveled. Most people are. More recently though, it has been much simpler things that have removed me from my self. The temperature of a breeze as it hits my face, the color of the sky and the shape of the clouds or the way an article of clothing wears.
These have been reminders of times passed, both time spent with friends and time spent alone, all moments preserved in their own amber, frozen exactly the way they were, for better or worse. For a while, this troubled me. Never to say mine is, a lack of control can undermine even greatest fortitude and there is nothing more untouchable than time.
I recognize this is something we all battle at some point in our lives, and I hope for most people it is after the best of times. Luckily, this is true in my case. But for every wonderful moment experienced, there is always the foreboding of its reciprocal, the absence of that moment after it passes and the longing to return to it. We will visit friends, unconsciously trying to recreate nights, days, weeks spent together, but schedules will never perfectly align, people come and go and lives change. A holiday will come with the hope to re-live one from childhood, but we are no longer children. A trip will be taken, an entire weekend spent silently straining, hoping to duplicate the 15 minutes on the way home where everyone was in tears laughing, on the exact same wavelength, a vessel of many parts completely in sync.
I consider it likely that change of the seasons is what, in part, brings about this sort of contemplation. The end and the beginning, clashing and blending together, with the outcome always having been predetermined. I have long considered the notion that time is our only enemy and I tend to agree with it, more strongly during some times than others. There is nothing time cannot take away from you, in any and every possible way. Time will never cease to do what time does, and its rulings are final, even when delayed. But upon considering this again, I realized that yes, all wonderful things have been taken by time, but only because they were delivered as well. The only things we cannot lose are the things we have never had so there is no reason for dismay over the longing of what is lost. These things should be supernovas in our minds, burning so brightly for a fraction of time and then gone again, as quickly as they came.
Every time we are taken back to a place in time, it should remind us that there is a never-ending supply of moments for us to create for ourselves, moments to add to the collection. One of the greatest feelings in the world is to realize not after but during, that you are experiencing something you will be taken back to months, years and decades down the road.
It is easy to try and go back to the way things once were. But I discovered the less I focused on trying to replicate moments, the more they became the kind that will re-appear to me in a sound, feeling or thought as I grow old. There is nothing time can take away that it has not already gifted us, so as it can be our greatest enemy at times, we should recognize and appreciate the moments it is our greatest ally.
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"Advance, and never halt, for advancing is perfection. Advance and do not fear the thorns in the path, for they draw only corrupt blood." - Khalil Gibran
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