Time–the meaning of it, the concept of it, the passing of it–has been on my mind of late. Memories. Moments. Days that come and go, like smoke on the wind, like vapor. The transitory nature of our lives. The inexorable passage of years.
This month, I lost someone unspeakably dear to me. It is hard. Life will not be, cannot be, the same. It happened fast. One moment, they were there. The next, they are gone. A dreamlike mist has descended over many of my senses. Past, present, and future all merge into one, a coalescing of time and space and matter. I reach out to touch a memory. It is there, real, actual, and yet immaterial. It slips through my fingers like a lake breeze.
Time is an illusion, the concept of it a construct of our need to place order on the infinite, the divine, the universal. Certain memories from decades ago feel as if they happened last week; while some memories from last week feel decades old. There is no ticking clock at the soul level, no segmentation of hours and days and weeks and years. There is only a long, flowing undulation of experience, meaning, and love.
Indeed, it is the moments of our lives that matter most, the people and places we connect with, the memories we establish and cherish, and hold onto like talismans of the soul. These are eternal. They are stored away in the secret recesses of the heart, there to be called upon whenever we think of them, and oftentimes when we don’t. They can rise to the surface of our consciousness at the most unexpected of moments.
Sometimes these memories, these moments, are painful. They can elicit a longing, a crying out, a lamentation. But I have learned that they are precious. They are what makes us, us, and they are to be cherished and nurtured like the gifts they are.
For me, I have always needed to write things down, to preserve them on the page (or the computer screen). Real-life experiences are often sifted through the mill of the creative process, emerging in stories and characters and scenes and lines of prose that pour forth from the subconscious. This will be no different.
In the end, it’s all about love, I think. That’s what makes the memories so alive, the emotions so overpowering and enduring. It is love that defines us and shapes us.
“Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself,” Khalil Gibran wrote a century ago. “Love possesses not nor would it be possessed. For love is sufficient unto love.”
Thanks so much for reading!
–Mike
Eye-Dancers 