Here we are.
This exact,
unique,
present moment…

existing, living, breathing.

Entirely alone but totally together at the same time.

We coexist.

Each having their own world independently swirling around inside the brain.
Every single second.

Day by day our paths flutter in and out from each other, constantly crossing and uncrossing, weaving in and out of each others’ lives. Our spheres of influence become 3 Dimensional Venn Diagrams forever in motion.

Our individual lives dance with and about each other. It’s like a room full of helices moving in every direction.

Sometimes they live in harmony, entwined for a few moments. If we’re lucky, they remain entangled for quite some time, as long as they possible can be. But eventually they always carry on. Whether alive or afterwards on into the unknown, they eventually break away. The Human Life is far too variable.

There’s too much growth and creation and destruction to tolerate a singular life that fits perfectly with the Life of a another human. We’re too different. We change too much. How can we be constrained by the Life and experiences of any one other human.

They are not a god, nor should they play god. We aren’t and shouldn’t feel caged by the Life of another human. They alone do not have the experiences we are searching for. Sometimes we are required to move along and continue to search for awaits us – Potential.

Sounds sad, doesn’t it?

But why? Who says it has to be?

We evolve and grow and change and evolve. Future becomes the present as the present slowly fades in to nothingness. We are constantly existing in the newest moment of evolutionary history. I recently read that we are all ‘living for the first time’. How can we be constricted to the lifestyle and experiences of a singular other person?

Life gets different. Let it.

Relational Velocity

Sometimes the enmeshing makes sense. Other times it leaves us reeling in shock.

Sometimes we decide to dance a little longer. Other times we break free of the social bond as it slowly no longer suits us. Those who have figured out how to be brave enough anyways.

Other times the emotionally packed life continues on life-ing and we wake up to faded bonds.

Sometimes life grant us a connection that aren’t quite as calculated.
Pure coincidence. A happenstance. Totally and utterly unexpected. Sometimes we had no idea.

Other times we bet on it. We could’ve guessed, but still a “never thought I’d see you here” emerges.
Quietly our lives whisper themselves back into a captivating conversation.

Luck?
Faith?
God?

I prefer the more optimistic Serendipity.

I tend to default to the notion of Randomness. With the sheer volume of humans that exist we’re bound to see a pattern… or rather, create one.

But I’m not here to discuss the theories of the origin of the Universe nor dissect our religious beliefs. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Other times the fire ceases to be stoked. It quietly blows itself out. Others sparks are are lit in their place and with the right kindling, some grow to full fledge fires.

Sometimes the sparks don’t spark.
Other times they are life changing.

I don’t know that either can be predicted.
And I don’t think either should be forced.

Sometimes we are forced to walk our path with just ourselves for some time.

“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours”

Henry David Thoreau

So we set out on our own for awhile, marching a path full of uncertainties and indecision. Our paths part ways. It forks and turns and switches back.

Unaccompanied, but marching to the beat of our own drum.

I’m pretty sure we’re supposed to not know. Wouldn’t that take the fun out of the journey? Trust in self and faith in the unknown.

Because aren’t we always alone?
Even when we aren’t, we have to be.
Can anyone truly know our thoughts?
Our deepest darkest secrets?
Our indecisions, uncertainties and big old Question Marks in Life?

Even someone who knows us to our core… we’re not them. We’re different. We are our own being. Nobody can take that away from us.

And so we retain some level of Independence. We have to.

We can’t ever fully understand the path someone else walks. It weaves and winds in ways we couldn’t possible understand. It already ventured through the Dark super scary forest and it will go through more.

We accompany you along the way, but the journey of life can only be lived by You, As mine can only be lived by me.

Nobody else can alleviate all our burdens, nor us theirs.

We can’t fathom the pains and the sorrows and the experiences. We can’t share them all. We can only fathom our own.

The birth of a child. The death of a loved one. Marriage. Cancer. A vacation to the Bahamas. Similar… and yet totally different. We won’t ever truly know Life as one another. We can’t. It’s impossible. I can’t walk in your shoes and you can’t mine.

Empathy, sympathy, and the willingness to listen get us pretty close.
But even those closest to us still walk to the beat of their own drum.

We can’t dictate the lives of others, nor begin to feel what another feels. We can support and attempt to understand but we can’t be someone else. We can’t fully understand them. And they can’t us.

The burdens and joys of life must be shouldered alone. They’re ours and ours
alone to experience. It’s what gives us independence.

It’s what makes this life uniquely ours.

Theoretical Human Physics

As we progress through the journey of life, venturing down paths waiting to be discovered, the Infinite yields possibilities beyond our comprehension. Our lives encompass an infinite number of variables, each with an infinite number of possible outcomes. They could all go right or left or right or wrong or sideways. Sometimes every which way happens all at once.

Sometimes it’s overwhelming and in the occasional afternoon our lives start to make a shred of sense, only to be thrashed out to the Sea of the Unknown once again.

It feels impossible to conceptualize. The sheer volume of potential outcomes. Butterfly Effect. Direction. Past history and potential futures. We choose and yet it’s all random. Yet there’s only one point in time that we all simultaneously coexist in.

It is the moment of now.

Each of us have our own trajectories and speeds and positions. Physics calls them the position, velocity, and acceleration vectors. Typically the refer to Newton’s beloved objects in motion.

Those same vectors seem to describe humans as well.

They describe us moving through time… where we’ve been, where we’re going, how fast.

Progress.

Each of us moves through time with an infinite number of possibilities. Some of us progressing. Some of us speed up while others are slowing down. Some ready to make the leap while others are living in a house of cards. Some are on a trajectory we’re happy with, while others dread the downward spiral.

And yet we all shop at the same Walmart. Each of us walk the same streets. We all work in the same corporate building and say hello in the same tone of voice.

Our position, velocity, and accelerations are constantly changing.

We collide with new humans. They give us some of their own direction. We give them some of ours. We compromise in an effort to fit in. We adjust, change, opt out and in of careers. We pick new partners. We move cities.

‘The only constant is change’
-Heraclitus

Our fellow humans’ trajectories rub off on us.

The Present is a Gift

We are infinitely present because we have to be. There is no other moment besides The Right Now. Our minds may wonder and we may dream of another life, but our bodies are tethered to the present.

We must exist in the present. It’s all ABOUT us. The Present IS us. Yet at the same time we’re infinitely small and totally insignificant.

The Present Moment strangles our attention for just a split second before departing in to oblivion. It now resides in the Infinite of the fleeting Past.

It’s gone. The moment is over. It’s always over. It keeps being over. The moment stays being finished. Over and over and over.

Every single moment that we exist in consciousness is the one of foremost Human History.

History is now. We are living it. We exist and therefore so do the stories. We are telling the stories but we’re also creating them as we speak.

Every single moment that we live is fleeting. Every single is one that we endure. We live, experience, appreciate, or ignore. But we must choose, because it’s all in the present. These are all feelings of this singular moment.

The focus of our attention makes it so.

Without the mind or the ability to focus, the moment is gone without having been experienced.

Ecstasy – Over in a flash.
Bouts of anger – over in a flash.
Marriage. Graduation. Child birth.

They’re all over in a flash.

Do they even really exist? Have they ever existed?
Or are they just segments in our memory?

Are these things really just figments of our imagination? Fabrications of our brains?

Have we conjured up something that feels so real… something so powerful that we believe it to be real?

But is it really real?

What is a memory?
What does it constitute it?
You and I both remember that first kiss, but why? What about it makes it real? Because you remember it?

Science has proven over and over again that our memories and immensely fallible.
Who is to say the past is real?
Who is to say our past really happened?

Because we agree that it did?
It feels so far away. It feels so foreign.

It feels like someone else lived that life but not us.

Tick tok, tick tok. The moments just keep passing.
They keep going and we keep on living through.

We were excited for the Job, but now we just… job.
Relationships, same thing.
Vacations, same way.
That trip to Italy made us so excited…but now we’re here. We are living it.

We’ve already adapted. We have fast forwarded in to the present. The Present is now. We expect the next moment to come.

Is this what it means to live the dream?
Is this really it?

Moments Agreed Upon

We go on to impress and inspire. We share the experiences with our friends only for our friends to be jealous of what already was. But it is no longer. We are only residing in this very moment.

Together.

Did we really experience it?
Were we even there?

Silly me.

We were… but were we really there?
Were we present?

Did we feel the biting wind on our face?
Did we suck in the salt and taste it on our tongue?
Did we savor the sweetness of that juicy watermelon?

Have we truly experienced or did we just exist.
Did we savor the very feel of soft breeze through the air?
Did we embrace the feeling of connectedness to another human being?

It doesn’t matter now.
It is over.

I wonder if our body was truly present to know the emotions we felt.
I wonder if we ever appreciate the beauty of the forest or if we’ve been blinded by the tree directly in front of us?

In front of us… that’s the key isn’t it?

We spend so much time thinking about what will happen. We think about what might or has or could’ve happened. What about the now?

Both a blessing and a curse isn’t it… to feel everything so deeply? It all feels so personal.

Sure, we could ignore the present with a dismissive handwave and an “it’s not that deep”.

But why?
Why, oh why, would we we do that do ourselves?
Why deny the ability to feel?

Even if that feeling is the pain and the sorrows…
the heartache and the heart break…

Wouldn’t you rather have experienced it in the fullest parts of yourself?

I say let them flood the depths of the my soul.
Let my consciousness be overwhelmed by the sensations.
Let the ‘exhaust’ from my Living fill the room of my mind. I want to be poisoned by the carbon monoxide of Emotional Intoxication.

I would rather you push me to the limit so that I know I’m, capable of feeling.

Let me be terrified of the leap so that it means something when I take it anyways.

There aren’t any rules.
None.

You make the game. You write the script. You write your own.

There are no rules in this Game of Life and any guidelines are an apparition.

You make the rules. You write your own.
So make your own life.

Go live it… before our memories are faded in the sediments of time.

Don’t forget about the moment.
Please.

appreciate them
savor them
and if you dare, live them.