cycles

Each and every moment of your life that you have lived, you have already lost. 

Even the moment you just spent reading these words is forever gone. Poof! Lost to the past. This ephemeral quality of life should make us all highly attuned to the magic of a buttered toast, a child's rumpled hair, a lover's embrace. Alas, no amount of mindfulness can rectify the implacable loss that is inherent in living. There is no rewind button. There is only forward. We are living in a constant state of unrecognized grief as time unravels us. Maybe it is precisely because we are unable to hold onto an experience or a feeling, press pause, that we turn to objects. We begin to imbue them with the ability to contain our precious lives for us. 

I look at the books on my shelves and I love being reminded of the delight or solace each has given me. And, much like a photograph, I can often open one and read a paragraph and be transported in my mind to the precise subway car or stretch of beach or darkened bedroom in which I first read those words. And yet, I can never get back there. That moment is forever lost, that person is forever gone. 

As we drag our poor, confused bodies and souls through this endless stream of loss without much notice, sometimes it's just fine to mourn all the moments you have lived, all the people you have been.

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