“One of the most bittersweet feelings has to be when you realize how much you’re going to miss a moment, while you’re still living it.” -u.fo Twitter
This one hit me in the gut this morning. There are a lot of moments in life when you just wish time would fly, when the clouds will pass and quickly. (waiting for a job offer or medical results or for your teenage kids to get safely home at night . . . for renovations to be finished and strangers out of your house) But then there are those perfect moments, like the author described, that are so perfect, so beautiful, so profound, that you wish that you could just freeze those moments and go back to them, again and again. These moments remain in your memory, of course. You may have even gotten a few photos to help outline that memory, but the actual feelings, sensations, experiences will never be duplicated in quite the same way that is happening in that very moment that you wish could last forever. Often times we don’t even grasp that we are in one of those “big” moments until the experience has already passed. The most poignant experiences are the ones when you are fully aware of just how amazing and awe-inspiring these moments are, how special and fleeting these particular happenings are in life and you want to enjoy and savor them, but at the same time, you are already mourning their future loss.
I have become one of those annoying middle-aged women that pissed me off when I was a young mother.
“Enjoy these moments. They grow up so fast!”
When I was younger, that statement, spouted to me by a woman with grown kids would often overwhelm me with fatigue, and anger, and guilt and stress. But I think sometimes it jogged me into a new perspective – added a little bit more patience into my demeanor with my children. It put a little more awareness in me about the preciousness and fleetingness of life, and the moments that make up life. Sometimes, in my utter exhaustion, I slowed down enough to see the constant changes and growth in my children, sometimes on a daily basis. And on rare occasions, I was so overwhelmed with love, and gratefulness, and the awe of the gift of their lives in my life and our lives intertwined, that I wanted to crystallize and become a static statue of that particular moment, with all of the feelings and sensations encapsulated, so that I could experience it forever.
“Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.”
― Georges Duhamel