The Past
People say that we don’t appreciate something until we realize it’s no longer with us. To come to expect something only to find it gone brings about a certain regret, discoverable only in retrospect, that we failed to properly value something more impermanent and fragile than we had originally believed.
In recent months, the pandemic and its isolation have deprived us of things we’ve come to expect and, indeed, take for granted, whether they be our health, the activities that bring us joy, or our interactions with others.
These changes have affected us all in innumerable ways. And these changes make us appreciate others—all those working on the front line, the friends whom we rely on and who support us—whose importance in our lives we may never have fully realized before.
Now, more than ever, there is a craving for stability. Yet stability always escapes. Things are always changing, and even though people rely on the fleeting circumstances of today to anticipate tomorrow, nothing is forever constant, except, perhaps, the inevitability of change. Reality can become unrecognizable as easily as it remains the same.
The Future
I’ve been taking more and more walks lately. There’s a lovely grove situated not too far from me, and despite the unnerving temperatures, I try to find time to meander my way there and take in the nature.
It’s a calming experience: a sanctum from the human world—irrespective of its proximity to asphalt roads, streets of houses, and, lately, a construction site—and the burdens of everyday humdrum. At this time of year, there isn’t much else to do other than enjoy the surroundings.
Nature has a certain beauty in its erratic fluctuations. And occasionally, I see a reflection of other, broader dynamics in life; they flicker across my mind in similarly erratic bursts: Calgary, the communities that have welcomed me, the people who will always express concern for me, all the experiences and guidance that I know will stand me in good stead. For these, I’m inexpressibly grateful.
So it pains me to listen to civilization’s encroachment in the background, knowing, with little certainty of fact, but with a heavy, inexplicable intuition, that the trees will be felled if not now, then in several years—that many friendships and connections to communities that I cherish will simply evaporate away over time—that the places I know today will be unfamiliar in the future.
There’s a certain transience to everything. The brevity may be a matter of days or weeks. It may be a matter of years or decades or centuries and so on, but, relative to the pure majesty of time, nothing lasts.
Now
We resign ourselves to this inevitability and, consequently, appreciate our current experiences with the hopes of preserving the present—soon-to-be the past—in memories.
Time erodes the physical world. People change. Memories, nevertheless, remain, not as perfectly-preserved recollections of events, but as fragments of experiences that encapsulate an elementary feeling—of joy, of wonder, of revelation, of sorrow—just as how in reading literature, we close a book and come back to reality not with a detailed recollection of the plot or even of specific characters, but rather, the emotions it invokes in us and the new insight we gain on life.
These past few months should remind us all to appreciate the present and recognize the transient nature of everything, including, and perhaps most importantly, those around us.
Let us be grateful to the people who give us happiness; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
—Marcel Proust, Les Plaisirs et les Jours