All The Things That Have Come Before You

I’ve been thinking about this more than usual, and I usually think about it a lot. Every spool of thread has a beginning but it’s never the only spool in the bunch.

A fan of history books, documentaries, biographies—I have a habit of consuming something while thinking, “This was a physical place and time, as much as I’m matter sitting here now.” And yet, in those readily consumed moments, I was not and these others were. As I lay in the grass and feel my heartbeat, swimming in the reality of hopes and fears, I know someone else has done that too. Perhaps in this very spot. If I watch a movie filmed in the late' ‘80s or early ‘90s, I’ll imagine how I’m also captured there. Not on screen of course, but somewhere in the real world, at precisely that moment, I was alive. Doing something. What was it?

Where did that matter go? Because one day I will too. It’s easy to bypass this with spiritual platitudes (and many try), but I think those sadly miss the magic. To press into that feeling of impermanence is to grasp the full weight of a lover’s hand. It’s to feel the grooves of your own fingerprint, a mark that uniquely is. It gives the things we think have meaning a heavy dose of the light.

And in the shadow, in the seeming emptiness of what is no more, we find a greater presence. This can be a communion or a feeling of lack. I think we get to choose.