On this day last year I was on a plane to Puerto Rico for a photography trip. I spent my days taking photos of beautiful things and nights on the beach. I spent hours talking to a girl that ended up being a wack job and battling with my (then) current girlfriend who I broke up with shortly after. I quit my job at Friendly's, which later closed down. Had sex with one of my oldest friends. Went to a holiday party and unexpectedly met the most amazing girl. We dated for 5 months, but a happy ending wasn't in our cards. I lived with my best friend for 2 weeks while she was dealing with breaking up with her fiance who she later married and is about to deliver their first child. In California. Because she moved there. But not before we went on a weekend road trip to West Virginia, got in a freak car accident and ended up stranded for over a week until we had to spend a night roaming the streets of Philly before taking a series of trains back to CT. On Valentine's day. I finished my first year of college. And started my second. Decided that social work and psychology are my calling. Lived in Germany for 3 months as an au pair and met the most amazing people and where 2 little girls stole my heart (and so did one big one). One big one who taught me amazing things and showed me beautiful places and held my hand when I missed home. And when I came back I dated a girl I'd been dating before I left and we took her kids to the park and they called me mom. I realized we had different life plans and ended things and met the girl of my dreams. I cried and I laughed until I was sick to my stomach. And then there were the little, insignificantly significant things. Learning how to do something new. Jumping around on the bed like a 12 year old. Playing the same song, over and over again. Baths. Dances. Kisses. Getting lost in a foreign country. And crying about it. I could go on. Tell you all about every little thing. And I would. Except that there's actually a point to this post and it isn't telling you my whole life story.
You see, the thing about life stories? They're never as long as we'd hoped. It's no secret that life is short. We face constant reminders of this in our daily lives. Through words, through pictures, and through memories. Through laying in bed at the end of each day and knowing that there is nothing we can do to change the events of that day. In the knowledge that that day is already over and we will never see it again.
While we can choose to see this fact of life in a negative light, much like change there is also an option to see it positively. That is what I choose to do. Instead of wasting precious time dwelling on a fact that I simply can't change, I do my very best to live each and every moment to it's fullest potential. To suck it's marrow until there's nothing left, until it's bone dry. That way, at the end of every day, I lay in bed, yes, but instead of being saddened by the fact that it's a day I won't see again, I count all of the ways I made it the best day it possibly could have been. And then? I close my eyes and look forward to the next one.
Yes, life is short. Sometimes it feels as if you've only blinked and suddenly this huge chunk of time has disappeared and you now have less time left. If you're lucky, you get a hundred years to live. When you're small, that seems like forever. And then, as you get older, it doesn't seem nearly long enough. Sometimes it feels like a little bit of both.
But have you ever stopped and thought about just how much happens in a year? I don't mean just looking at two pictures, taken 365 days apart and noticing that your face has thinned out and that your nose looks slightly bigger, that your eyes look like they might have seen more, that behind them lies more wisdom...I mean really sat and reflected. Reflected on the things that you did and the lessons that you learned and the people you met and the times you put your whole heart into something. The nights that you spent hours lying in bed thinking, rather than dreaming. The hardships you thought you'd never get through, but somehow did. The things you knew better than to do, but did anyways and either suffered the consequences or reaped the fortunate benefits. All of the little things. Each of the 525,600 minutes. Well...have you?
For me, personally, I feel as though this year flew by faster than any other before it. At first thought, I felt like I'd blinked and suddenly everything had changed and nothing was the same and I had lost a whole year of this crazy thing called life. And I guess I still feel that way. But I also acknowledge and soak up all of the things that happened this year.
And it's impossible to remember everything. Every laugh, every tear shed, every promise broken, every promise made. Every time you were disappointed and every time you were pleasantly surprised because something or someone had exceeded your expectations beyond measure. You can't remember everything, but you can try. You can hold on to whatever memories you can and learn from them, laugh at them, but above all, cherish them. Because time does fly by. You do blink and suddenly something or everything seems to have disappeared. That's just the way things go. We're in a constant state of change, remember? And that's both devastating and breathtakingly beautiful.
365 days. That's all you get in a year. That's 8,760 hours, 525,600 minutes or 31,536,000 seconds. Each of those 31.5 million moments is precious. Make them count. Spend them laughing until you cry. Spend them learning, loving or doing whatever makes you happy. Just suck the marrow out of them. Bleed each moment dry. And then, every night, take a moment to revel in the knowledge that you made that day count for something. And after that? Close your eyes and dream. Tomorrow holds infinite possibilities...
But it's not promised. Remember that.
What's your life story? How are you writing it? If it ended today, would there be a happy ending?
Think about it.
