Jerry: I bet we meet again.
Holly: You better win that bet, because if you do, that'll be the end of it, you know.
J: The end of what?
H: Life. As we know it.
And, spoiler, the present reveals (in the film) that life had changed once again, with Jerry long gone after losing his battle with cancer.
But the fantastic life lesson remains: life as we know it is always changing, and the most precious moments that mark this transition can happen without us realizing it.
So, I must admit that I am an addict...to basking in these moments, that is. I love when I recognize that life as I know it is changing, and I am a witness to my own history.
I wish I could go back in time and relive those most amazing moments of my life:
- like when Victor and I laid eyes on each other for the first time back in 2011
- or when my freshman roommate (who would end up being my best friend in college) and I first met
- or the day I decided to ride my motorcycle two states away, despite my parents' disapproval
- all those times I had a personal best on a run
- every time I had a life-changing break up (knowing what I know now, these memories would probably be a lot less painful)
The list could go on forever. It's easy to look back in life and say, If only I knew then what I know now. But that's not the point. The point isn't to change our course; my wish for time travel comes from my desire to catch the missed opportunities to appreciate that moment. The past can't be changed, and the future has yet to come. Yet the present is, by definition, a fleeting moment.
Like, do you ever meet someone (i.e. at the post office, your waiter at a restaurant, or someone on the street) and wonder, "Wow, we have no reason to cross paths, but we're affecting each other's lives. We will live on in a stranger's memories"? No? Just me? Awk-ward.
I thought that today, when I was interviewing for a potential housing situation. I went on Craigslist — boom, found a dream house situation, and arranged a meeting the same day. I was talking to one of the tenants/the head of the household, and I thought to myself: Holy crap. Even if I never live with them, he is perhaps one of the most interesting people I have ever been so lucky to talk to. I don't want to say goodbye. And you know what? I told him so. I told him that, even if I don't get the room, I would love to stay in touch and hopefully become friends.
All because of a Craigslist ad and an interview with one of many housing advertisers.
And these small, seemingly inconsequential day-to-day interactions we have with people, THEY are the end of life as we know it.
How can we measure the amount of changes and detours our life paths go through? It's so mind-boggling. I am an OCD person. I want to organize life with charts, lists, and graphs. I want to quantify the unquantifiable. I want to manage the chaos that is essential to our existence. But the beauty of living is that the most predictable variable is life's constantly mid-transformation. Even on days I decide not to work out (when I should), or on days I decide to go out for lunch among strangers at a sushi bar instead of staying in, I am ending the life I knew that morning I woke up.
Brilliant and beautiful.
So the challenge here is: can you remember all the little (and possibly big) moments from today that changed your life as you knew it?
If you can, then kudos. And then try to remember yesterday's. Then attempt to remain a witness to your life forever transitioning as it happens. It's more beautiful than the best memory, because it happens in the elusive present tense, a moment so fleeting that its value is driven by natural scarcity.
Hey, guess what? Reading this post, I bet your life just changed (as you knew it).
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