So much of life is spent getting to the end of the day, making it
through some segment of time to arrive at the end of it, only to find another segment in front of it, taunting us.
Most of life is preparation, a grinding of the gears and wheels to achieve motion, even though most of the time
we really don't know where we're going.
And then one day you wake up, be it to sunshine or darkness, and you realize where you are right now. It's a fleeting reflection, one that can't stick around for too long before the impetus of the next time segment tugs at our feet and arms. Even when battling with boundaries and burdens we find ourselves meandering, we still manage to move forward. It is more possible to hold an employment while also battling alcoholism, depression, loneliness, or indifference than it is to simply let those things take root to where they stop us from living as those around us do. It is no surprise to me that so many of us holding our lives together are doing so unhappily, hopelessly, or for lack of something better to do.
Life gets interrupted. Most of the time it does, it's by people or situations not typical that cause us to reflect on our pasts, what it was that got us to where we are now. When I catch up with old friends or return to an area with which I was once all too familiar, I am being called back in time. I wish that our futures could be conjured so easily, so immediately. The future, it seems, is the one thing that happens unbeknowst to most of us.
It was my one consolation as a child who feared the coming nights, the darkness and silence. That eventually, no matter how scared I was or how long I could stay awake, that tomorrow would come. Now the reverse is true. I'm never ready for tomorrow and when it comes, it is seldom what I'd hoped it would be. And all the while I feel like I could have done something to have made it what I wanted, if I'd only had more time.