I got to thinking
I got to thinking. Great first words, usually the start of an unabashed rambling narrative of naivete. They’re the beginning to monologues fueled by evenings of recreational drug use. The kind of stories that have no concise sense of ending.
There I was in the shower and I got to thinking. The great think tank of the western world: the shower. How many breakthroughs, brainstorms, epiphanies, eurekas, ah-has, moments of clarity, consolations, resolutions, ultimatums, and imaginary arguments have been waged within its echoing walls? Countless I’m sure. In the shower there is a sense of freedom, a ritualistic shedding of our outer layers. It’s the kind of freedom that allows us to sing without reservation.
So there I was in the shower and I got to thinking that we try to coerce our lives into a greater narrative, trying to find those Hollywood moments. The perfect script, actors, lighting, and staging. Surely those moments exist. We have all born witness to profound moments of pleasure and pain. But often the greater context is lost on us until much later. It is in the afterglow that these moments show their true weight. And even as we recall these capstones of ourselves the experience is less immediate: we view them in the terms of movies.
I got to thinking that the true measure of time are the seemingly insignificant moments. I find them much easier to return to. I cannot recall the first I-love-yous or paradigm shifts in my life with much detail. But I can always return to the late morning awakenings bathed in the afternoon sun as she and I would race to the end of the crossword, neither one of us very good at it on our own. But together? We were a force to be reckoned with. I recall silent yet content drives. Stealing glances in the long stretches between headlights. Not a word shared, just a quiet happiness.
This was years ago. And I’ve moved on. I am not in love anymore. But these moments are indelible. They are burned into my memory. And as such I can return to them at will. There is a pattern to life, rich beyond our understanding. The human brain does not comprehend concepts like finite or infinite with much success. So the greater narrative melts away. What is left, what we can grasp, are those small mundane moments. Those glances. Those mornings.
Hold these moments close. They are yours.
