Chasing memories

Embracing life's transience

It's really hard to grasp the fact that everything is fleeting. You think you can hang onto things but time never stops. It certainly never gives you a chance to catch your breath and appreciate the moment. That's up to us.

We must try to do the impossible, to really appreciate life while we are experiencing it. But how could we? We have no frame of reference. We've never experienced what we're experiencing right now before.

I realize now that part of the way I've always dealt with change was to not really accept it. I realize that there has always been a part of me that believed if I did this or that then I could return to what was changing, or at least how I felt during that time. Reliving old memories, they are less sad when part of you believes you can eventually get back there again. To that place in the photograph or that age or that experience. To that weight.

There are some people in my life who mean so much to me that the only way I can bear not being with them is because a part of me doesn't realize that I might not ever see them again.

It really makes you question leaving home. Because you can never go back home again. I think I was able to fly so far away so fast because I didn't understand that. Not really. My brothers, my family, my friends. What we had might be all we ever get. It was easier for me to try to live my own life when I didn't understand that.

I've also been thinking about legacy, which is really just memory. A memory requires a person to remember it. So even legacy is temporary. Everything is temporary. Except death.

So love all you can, as much as you can. Feel all you can, for as long as you can. Because life is but a dream.

God, those nursery rhymes weren't playing around. 😆