Always Take the Waltz
My mom once told me that I’d be lucky to have one true friend by the time I got to be her age.
You may think this is a pessimistic way to start a post, but it’s true.
Life is transitory.
It may seem like things have sucked forever, it may appear that you’ve been in high school for ten years or you’ve been stuck in that job for a thousands or you’ve been friends for a million – in the moment, everything seems permanent. It is only with foresight that we look back and realize how far we’ve come from that time of “permanent-ality”.
You can think of this as a sad thing, you can put on black and mourn how life refuses to stay the same, how we’re always moving, always changing.
Or you can throw your head back and roll your windows down and blast your favorite song while the wind tangles your hair and smile at the fact that life refuses to stay the same, we’re always moving, always changing.
It’s hard to live in the present, I know. It’s one of the things I struggle with the most. The past always seems to be beckoning you to come back and the future is eternally tempting you to wish to jump forward. But forgetting to live in the present, I have realized, is one of the most dangerous things we can do.
This past weekend, I was blessed enough to have a beautiful, beautiful day. My friends and I ventured out of the outskirts of Paris, where we were staying, hopped onto a old, battered overground train, and headed towards Versailles and the palace that lived there. I could only described the weather as a perfect balance, so perfect a balance you could never tell whether you were hot or cold, because you were, in actuality, neither. We explored the halls of the kings of France, our footsteps drowned out by the drone of tourists from all corners of the earth, speaking languages I couldn’t decipher. I saw glimpses of lives I couldn’t even begin to fathom, stories I could only try to weave with my own imagination. I wandered the gardens of Versailles, the sun smiling down on all us tiny tourists, my shoes dusted with the same ground graced by Louis XVI and his entourage. I counted out my coins and bought sorbet and ate it in the grass pond-side, watching the paddle boats lazily drift across the man-made waterway. We rented a rowboat, and wore our sunglasses, and took turns attempting to paddle our way around the pond, while listening to an amazing assortment of music, from classical all the way to “Sweet Home Alabama”.
That day my friend turned me and said, “I wish you could Instagram a moment”. And it was true. It was a moment of pure happiness, a moment I wish I could take you to exactly. It was a moment of sunshine and strawberries and contentment and beauty. But I know, no matter how hard I try to describe it, it’s a moment that cannot be described completely accurately and a moment that will never exactly happen again. It was one of the few times in my life, despite the stress and the homesickness, that I’ve felt completely and utterly present. And it is because of that feeling of “present-ness” that I can only hope you have a moment of such clarity yourself, so you can feel it too.
Life is transitory.
There is a saying I’ve heard somewhere, sometime, that says you will never step into the same river twice. Life is like a river, always flowing downstream, never halting, never reversing. And we can try to control it, we can build dams and reservoirs and attempt to stop it, but what’s the beauty in a river that cannot flow? There are many things I can look back on in life with sadness, and there are many things I can look forward to in life with happiness, and that’s okay. Reflection is healthy. But I’ve come to realize the very simple fact that it’s not worth jeopardizing my present happiness for things I cried about in the past or things I’m going to smile about in the future. I will never step into the same river twice. So I intend on taking advantage of every single river I’m lucky enough to experience.
So, you again might be thinking, doesn’t it still suck that I’ll only have one friend when I’m as old as my mom?
Yea, you can think of it as a bad thing.
Or you can reflect back on the past with happiness, knowing that wherever you’ve been and whomever you’ve loved, have become a part of you somehow. And be anchored in the present, knowing there’s a person with you who was special enough to bend the rules of the transitive property of life.
That beautiful day, in the rowboat, one of the songs we listened to was “Take This Waltz” by Leonard Cohen. Like I said before, I can’t take you exactly to my own moment of “present-ness”, but please take a moment to sit and listen, and make the next few minutes, a moment of “present-ness” of your own.
