Moments

There are certain moments in my mind that I can't get out of it. Certain memories. Certain instances. Certain situations. All of them taking up mere seconds of my life. Yet the time that's passed between then and now, the months and the years that have gone by...it's as though they simply vanish.

Each time I close my eyes and just remember, it all rushes back. Every potent sensation. Every delicate tremor. Every bated breath. Every vehement glance. There's no escaping memories like that. Because when I look back, my heart-rate rises and my mind races, every part of me is brought back into the moment.

Sometimes I wish it was a tangible thing, something I could reach back into and feel again...if I could just reach my hand back through the stretches of time and grab hold of the emotions, the situations, everything and anything to feel that way again. But I know it doesn't work that way, and life would be so much the poorer if it did.

One of the great beauties of life is that it's not something we can get back. Once something is gone, it's gone forever. The feelings of it are left only to linger in memory, the thoughts behind it only to be savored as ghosts of the past. Even if I could take each one of those moments back and relive them, they wouldn't be the same.

There's a certain poignancy in each experience that can never be repeated again. It is like the unfolding of infinite layers of humanity. We can only experience once such things that push our capacity for feeling to a higher level. Once. And then it can never be felt again. Not in the way it made us feel the first time, not with the shattering capacity to cause either joy or pain.

That's what the memory is for. That's where we keep those precious moments that could only once push us beyond ourselves.