Thirty three years later
A tiny boy born two months premature has become a rather less tiny man, sitting at a desk, typing, pausing for thought, resuming. It hardly seems possible to even begin to get a grasp of three decades of life, he thinks, and no wonder we don't remember everything that happens to us, all of it could never fit inside one braincase!
Not even in any number of journal notebooks over the years, or photographs in albums, or letters, videos, blog posts, chat messages, sketches, oral histories. This tiny moving slice, this window of attention through which we glimpse an ever-changing now — it's all there ever has been, or ever will be, world without end.
And yet so many threads can be traced through even a moderately eventful life: its bare chronology, recurring problems and themes, stories of love and loss, learning and growth, successes and failures, creative exploration, the development of a myriad of characters, personas, and roles. Countless threads woven and tangled together to somehow make up yet another ordinary, unique, irreplaceable person.
He feels at the same time utterly lost and incapable of understanding it all, as well as a kind of quiet comfort that, perhaps, there's no real need to. The words come, the thoughts come, the feelings and experiences keep coming as life has no choice but to go on, and the stream of consciousness will just keep flowing until the end.
If there's but one thing he learned of life so far, it's to just keep swimming, no matter how clumsily. Sometimes you may not know where you're headed, but you certainly won't get anywhere if you don't keep going.
This essay is part of a series of 30 short essays.