Each day comes and go in the blink of an eye. When we wake up, it feels like there’s a long day ahead of us, endless hours to fill up, so many things to do. But when the day comes to a close, all the individual events that seemed important at the time are simply forgotten. In hindsight, it all seems like a blur. As we lay in bed, falling asleep, we wonder what we accomplished, what we added to our lives, what we created or discovered that made it distinct and special apart from any other day.
On some days, we accomplish very little. On other days, we’re so occupied by the events, deadlines, chores, tasks, catch-ups, capricious decisions, spontaneous epiphanies that grabbed our attention, like organizing a pile of papers that have been sitting on our desks for months, or cleaning up a spill, etc., that we have so little time to accomplish what had planned or wanted. But I’ve realized overtime that not everyday is about the accomplishments, of what I got ahead in, because there are days for reserved for that, while other days are meant for experiences.
What each day brings is not just productive opportunities, but trials, surprises, and insights–some more than others. There are days where we don’t feel like doing anything, and days where we feel motivated to get everything done. There are days where we feel lost and don’t know what to do, and days where everything is crystal clear and mapped out like a flowchart. There are days where we feel like we’re wasting the hours, and days where it feels like there aren’t enough of them to accomplish everything on our agenda.
There was a time when I was young when I had laid on the grass on my back and stared up at the sky during a summer day. I was lying on an open field, much like a soccer field, and I stared up at the blue sky and watched the clouds roll by, and it seemed like an eternity for them to move just an inch. The minutes and hours of our days, in contrast, roll by so much faster than those clouds, almost as if we’re always in hurry–or need to be. When I remember that day in my youth when I watched those clouds roll by imperceptibly, time as we define it, whether a second, a minute, an hour, or a day, is just an intangible thing we simply remember but can’t hold onto, except for those profound moments that stay with us.
In fact, we don’t remember most days, since they are merely a blur, a mosaic of events, of memories we love or hate or ones that we would rather forget. We don’t remember each day, but we do remember the startling and breathtaking moments contained within them. Perhaps it is those rare and uplifting moments that are vital to existence, that give us meaning and an understanding of what life is all about; moments that rattle our mundane experiences and give us a window into something new, into something that broadens our minds, and is the reason we wake up each day.
Fallton Havenstonne 