Everything in life changes. And when I say everything, I mean ‘everything.’ Now I’m not talking about some metaphysical birth/death cycle or a mystical circle of life, I’m talking about true progress. Old-fashioned progress.

Sometimes I sit back and watch time roll by – sometimes lazily, sometimes with conviction. I watch with amazement as my birthday parties become more irregular and my favorite childhood cartoons disappear into a constellation of cancellations.

I stand in pure awe as I’m dazzled by change all around me, from storefronts, to music, you can’t help but hear the one tune that still whistles in the breeze.

I watch old friends come and go and new friendships blossom right before me. I see love on the distant horizon, and still feel the stinging arrows of love’s past defeat.

I hear my mom’s voice, tired; yet still as full and as rich as it was when I was five.

And I can’t help but feel a little bit touched by it – by everything. By how much things have truly changed. Although it’s not always happiness that fills my heart, but rather a deep and existential regret. A regret that I could not grasp everything at once, that I could not grab all the different moments of my life. I wish sometimes that I could just take certain moments, freeze them and store them away for all eternity; where they truly belong.

Still, I take solace in the fact that the few I did manage to hold on to simply sparkle – even if they were for a short time.

It’s ironic, but for me, the best part of the future isn’t hoping to catch a glimpse of what lies ahead, but looking back to what has already happened.

It still brings a smile to my face every time I remember those moments of the past. And even when the past didn’t elicit the best emotions, it always brought out the strongest.

I still cry every time I remember my first funeral. I still clamor and stumble to my feet each time I see those god-awful spiders I’ve hated since I was three. I still cringe at the thought that I really did eat 13 slices of pizza at one setting. I still laugh at the fact that I once told my mother I loved her because “everyone has to love their mother.”
The past is something spectacularly great. It’s something to treasure and hold on to. It’s something that you can curl up with on a winter evening, or sing to yourself when you’re in a nostalgic mood. It’s a collage of moments that knows no boundaries and echoes on the acoustic strings of life.

Everything changes, and it’s not what you do to stop it. It’s what you do to remember it.