Before the Years Have Swept Away

A moment of reflection on a quiet Sunday afternoon

Today, I noticed that my shower curtain is covered in sea turtles. 

Unfortunately, my bathroom isn’t actually full of aquatic reptiles. The design of the curtain, however, depicts blue, green, and brown loggerheads swimming against a white backdrop. I’ve been living in my apartment for four months, and I just realized that now.

It says something about simply looking at things versus actually seeing them, doesn’t it? When I noticed them, it struck me how little observation I must’ve been doing, seeing how I’ve spent plenty of time in that bathroom since I moved in. When I focused my eyes on the design, I realized that I quite like it. I love animals. Yet somehow, I never noticed it before.

It’s strange how that’s possible. But I, like many people, spend so much time wrapped up in my thoughts that my surroundings can become white noise, little more than space I move through as I march from one objective to the next. What else hadn’t I noticed? A silver tankard full of mushrooms behind the glass doors of my armoire, next to a bowl of pine cones and seashells, above drawers I’ve yet to even look inside. Four months, and I never paused to soak in my environment.

It isn’t exactly shocking. I don’t take enough time to appreciate my surroundings, to spend a quiet moment taking it all in. Everything, from the light pouring in through the window to the hum of the laundry machine and the click, click, click of the radiator, has it’s own unique charm. Outside, the clouds march slowly across the sky, and winter wrens flitter back and forth. Time moves too quickly when you don’t appreciate such things, and there’s no reason to make it go faster; deadlines, timeframes, and schedules already divvy it up until every last second is accounted for. In the end, there’s nothing left, no space for closing your eyes and grounding yourself exactly when and where you are. Nothing will ever be the same as it is right now. Give yourself the time and space to exist in the present. 

I say this as someone who is very bad at doing just that. I feel like I always have to be moving, furthering a goal, everything a means to an end; as if the ends I seek are all that matters, and the means aren’t more than just a way to get there. It’s cliché to say that one should enjoy the journey and not just the destination, but there’s a reason that trope is repeated so often: it’s where actual living happens. Life events—weddings, promotions, birthdays—are just markings on a yardstick, and everything else is the space in between. If you measure your life exclusively by those markings, you’ll realize that there’s only a handful of them; then, with the rest of your days blurred and indistinguishable, you’ll wonder where all the time has gone.

So, stop for a second. What do you hear? What is going on around you? Here, there’s a dog barking somewhere outside, down the street, followed shortly by a boy barking after it. Then quiet. On Sundays, Lugo is a sleepy town. Grocery stores and restaurants close, along with the little shops that line the windy streets. Today, the clouds move lazily, too, sin prisa, a subtle reminder that the world has not fallen still. Moss grows between tiles on sagging rooftops perched above facades covered with dark lines, a reminder that here, even when it’s dry, the rain reigns supreme. But it’s not raining now, and the white light emanating from behind the clouds gives the impression that the world has stopped on its axis.

The world, however, stops for no one. This year, I realized—for the first time—that I have 20-year-old memories. Yet, they feel just as close, or as distant, as any other memory; time removed, then, is not the determining factor in how long ago they feel. That means that, one day, should I live long enough, I’ll have a lifetime full of memories, all of which could’ve happened anywhere between one day and 50-plus years before. With time so compressed, removed from the measuring stick of our clocks and calendars, it’s no wonder that a 90-year-old would feel like it all happened in an instant.

Nothing is promised in life, but, health and good fortune willing, that could be any of us. So, make time to acknowledge its passing, before the years have ran ahead of you like a swollen river in a rainstorm, erasing the moments you casually swept aside when you thought they would never end.