Last Year.

I thought it might be fun to look back on January last year, and guess what! I posted something on this day, one year ago! It happens to be one of my favorite posts, although I'm not sure I agree with all of it anymore.
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Originally posted January 23, 2008. I think I was sitting at Starbucks.

How beautiful fleeting moments are! I was thinking of a moment that both saddened me and yet made me cherish the moment even more. Have you ever had dinner with someone about to go away to war? Even takeout becomes a special day. What about time with someone you know is going to die soon, or a glorious day away from distractions, with those you love? What about putting your arms around someone, but knowing that they're not with you in heart, only in body? At least for a second you can believe that some part of them is yours. What seems ordinary becomes, in the context of time (which has no master) suddenly something you wish was tangible. Oddly, although moments hold qualities that would seem to be measurable, they are not. Oh, you can measure the time, the date, the people who were there, or the amount of seconds that you held that feeling that seemed so long. But you can't really measure the value and you certainly can't bottle the moment to be enjoyed later. Try putting experiences into a two week time frame, or a day, or a month, or a hundred years. A thousand wishes and broken watches won't stop the perpetual spin into another lifetime just seconds away.

Daily I'm reminded that all good things do, indeed, end. Perhaps this is because the constant flow of good and happiness only increases our desire for more beauty, more peace, more love, more of someone or something. I used to think that absence was painful- and it is, don't get me wrong- but it's a different kind of pain. There's the pain of knowing you can't have someone or something that fills one of those little cracks in your heart, and then there's the pain that couples with anticipation and longing for something that is possible. The beauty of the latter is that you learn to be independent but then cherish the time that you are together. I've felt the pain of both: The pain of never being able to have, and loneliness that comes with waiting.

I've had some gorgeous fleeting moments. I'll never forget my first kiss, my first achievement, or those thousands of moments when I was afraid I wasn't going to make it. I'm learning to enjoy those moments that are so deceivingly fleeting, while pausing to remember something from that moment that I can savor later. And in this fleeting moment, my laptop battery is slowing dripping its energy into oblivion, and I must stop typing before I lose all of this forever.... (which may, of course, not be such a bad thing)