Everyone’s’ life is typically seen in retrospect as a collection of phases. We live our lives with all the responsibilities, good or bad experiences, and aspirations buzzing around us, but whenever we sit down with a nice cup of tea and think about our day, we usually only focus on the highlights. These highlights eventually, over the course of maybe a few months or a year, thin out and become broad stages or chapters. We forget the details. This way of thinking, from the way I see it, is especially easy to fall into early since we all enter different grades in school for the majority of our young life. In addition, there’s always that cliché of calling whatever point young people may be in their lives simply a phase that will be outgrown in a few months to a year. We are told by people that our lives are divided; separate parts that fit in a little pie wheel from Trivial Pursuit.
These chapters seem to me like a very limited way of thinking about the past. Even I sometimes think of certain events as the main plot twist for a chapter, or certain blocks of time as separate from other blocks of time; but if life is just a series of chapters, then where is the ridiculous adventure that doesn’t fit in with the rest of the book? Where is the freedom to not care about plot continuity and just jump into something stupid? It feels like this thought pattern forces people to think of themselves as a dissociated main character rather than themselves living life as they see fit. Of course, some people may not fall into this trap. Others, however, watch their lives go by; unaware of the amount of control they really have over their life.
From my perspective, life is in the details rather than the highlights. It’s in the snapshots of memory rather than the stogy chapter.
A friend of mine once mused about how the older you get, the faster time feels. He explained that since each day becomes a smaller fraction of your total lifespan, it follows the logic that the more you have of something, the less important or memorable it becomes. This, of course, does not mean that people’s lives are worthless, but it provides a different perspective from when you are young and have only lived a handful of years.
Whether this musing is true or not, it definitely stirs the wheels of thought. How will I look back at my life and judge what I did as a lost little twenty-one year old? Will I scoff at her inexperience and deluded dreams? Will I be proud of her energy and motivation? How many regrets will I have? Of course, I can’t say. But I really hope that I will remember all the tiny details as much as possible.
I want to remember just how hot Odessa was during the high noon hour. I want to remember how good the taste of black tea, sugar, and vanilla soy milk was on a cold October day. I want to never forget how much my fingers hurt after making a 20-string friendship bracelet.
In any case, nobody can say what future-me will think and I probably shouldn’t even be worrying about it since I have enough to worry about over the next 24 hours.
I took this picture in Odessa. The yellow buses were the sweltering marshrutkas .
katherine pretending to be a philosopher 