With so many things in our lives there is a build up. The weeks leading up to Christmas. Months planning a wedding. Getting ready for a trip across the world. We prepare ourselves and look forward to these moments as they approach. Then they happen and life continues. I remember as a kid loving the Christmas season. Watching as everyone got more and more excited by putting up lights and decorations. The number of presents under the tree subtly getting bigger as we got closer to that big day. By Christmas morning excitement was at its highest and that's when the bass drops, usually leading to wrapping paper everywhere. The rest of the day you kind of bask in the afterglow of that level of joy. The next day you wake up and it's behind you. Hopefully it hasn't been disappointing, but not matter what experience you have, the moments we look forward to the most will eventually be in the past and on their way to being memories. A part of me wonders if that's why the idea of heaven is so appealing to people. It's a place where you get to be with all your loved ones and live your best moments for ever. I think most people would classify that as wonderful, even if they don't believe such a thing makes any kind of logical sense. I suppose the natural inclination is to start looking forward to something else, which in itself isn't a bad thing. It's good to have upcoming things in your life that you are excited to become reality. Maybe that's what life really is about. Moving onto the next thing while enjoy what came before.
The world is a strange place when you return to it. At least that's how it can feel if you've been away for any longer than normal amount of time. I look around at the things that are familiar and yet somehow foreign. It's been said that you can't go home again because it's not the place that has changed, but rather you that is different now. When some people leave the familiar all they can see are the differences in what they see now compared to what they've always seen before. This isn't exactly a bad thing, but focusing on that can make it harder to appreciate something new. I'm not saying one should just accept something because it's different. It's like learning a language though, where you will have an easier time if you stop translating and just start accepting the new word for the old object.
Still it's not until you've been away from something that you really see it for what it is or maybe what it once was. I remember coming home from college my first year and seeing the house I grew up in. It was the same place it was six months ago when I had left it, but I felt like I had seen and done so much in that small amount of time that it felt smaller on a fundamental level. It was still very comfortable. In the years since then I've returned home several times and each time that house is something different to me. It still has all the old memories. The context for me being there changes though, which in turns means I see the entire place differently each time. It's hard to imagine that one day the home I grew up in won't be available anymore and I'll never be able to return to it.
We often don't realize when something is coming to close. Sure we can see the last day of school coming or know when it's time to say goodbye to our visiting family members. There are times when we know we won't see someone again or won't do something again, but more often than not the last of something sails by us without much notice until later, when we realize that we'll never get another chance at it. People often say live life like each day was your last. It's when we know that there will never be more that we embrace how special something is, even if it's normally not special at all. It's next to impossible to lead a normal life living that way. That kind of sentiment is usually saved for characters in movies and those unfortunate enough to know that their days are limited so it's best to actually live like there aren't a lot of tomorrows, because there might not be. Most of us though will get up tomorrow and probably not think about how yesterday was the last time that ever was going to happen. Sometimes that's a good thing though. That could mean yesterday was the end of what came before and while it's sad that you won't get to go back and experience it again, tomorrow is the beginning of something new. Maybe it's the first day rather than the last one.
