i often feel old whenever i listen to hollow coves. along with a tinge of nostalgia and gratitude for the moments i’ve lived. and a feeling of hope and anticipation too, for the moments i’ve yet to live.
hollow coves is a band. they came into my life by chance, complete serendipity. but that’s a story for another day. a day when we’ll sit by the fire and talk about the days gone by, and the people and things we’ll inevitably lose. and all the memories, all the memories.
i’ll probably learn to speak french in the future. maybe take a photography or drawing class too. yet here i am, talking about the future, sometimes about the past, and hardly a line about the present.
this period i’m in was once seen as the future. the future i think of now will someday be the present. and eventually the past. but not today. it’s this moment’s turn.
the present is where the frustration, fear, anxiety, all the stressful things are experienced. the future is always yet to come and promises a little less stress and frustration. and the past fades as time passes. my recollection of the things that have happened is fading, and i’m forgetting how frustrating and painful some moments were when i was experiencing them.
so a hope paired with a fading memory. no wonder i hardly stay in the present.
i have to start writing about critical stuff, i tell myself. about things with real weight, practical, and can be judged objectively. and not just musings and reflections that are all subjective. i wonder where that idea came from. it surprised me the first time i heard it. and now, i’m just trying to help the idea, refine and make it better. i can’t let go of it. not when it connects with a regret of mine.
i’ve been piling up regrets in this short life of mine. and one of them is that i don’t write as deeply, and as boldly as i could. that i don’t put myself out there and say what i want to say. that i held my tongue, my pen, and shirked away from expressing what i think about certain things. and instead taken a safer path, one with less possible tension and disagreements.
but that idea of safety is a false one. there’s always the possibility of tension, and of things not turning out how we want underneath every choice, or path we take. it’s about acknowledging and making our choices with this awareness, instead of thinking that we’re safe or that a path has no risk.
every path has its own risk. and it’s about living with and accepting this reality, whether the risks explode on us or not.
so yeah, it’s a regret i have. i could've written even deeper and put myself out there. written about topics that can be judged objectively, topics i could be proven wrong in by others. that’s the critical stuff i want to write about. but i’ve held my pen.
i’ve also been writing less in these last few weeks. at least that’s how it feels in the present. but i wonder how the months and years to come would define this period. it’s a thing about us humans, to let the way tomorrow turns out shape how we’d see today.
they say the past makes the present, and the present; the future. they’re right for saying this, and of course i say this too.
but then we only see the past, make sense of it from where we stand in the present. and we’ll only see and make sense of this period we’re in when we’re living in a different one several years from now.
as soren kierkegaard once wrote, “life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” and as i’ve recently heard someone say too, the living part comes before the knowing part.
i guess i’ll live it first, feel old and nostalgic, and then i’d understand.