June 17, 2014.

Don’t you get that feeling that the part of your life that you’ve lived already has somehow just flown by? Doesn’t it just feel like yesterday when you moved to this city, or met this girl, or got interviewed for your first job? I have been obsessed recently with the thought that life is nothing but momentary, it’s stuck in my head like an annoying weed, like a constant background music playing out of a broken harp, like a damper to all my moments of immense excitement, like a pain killer to get through the day when I have a heartache, like a badly timed joke when my mother would scold me. I know that when I think back the present time would just seem momentary. The life that I’m living currently would be compressed into a thought that lasts for just a second in future-me’s mind. Do we remember how hard we slogged for a project? Or how much fun our first amusement park ride was? Or how we waited and waited to meet an old friend and time seemed like it would never pass?

I have this image in my head of a bubble in a pond that comes up to the surface and bursts. So many bubbles in that same pond, just randomly coming up to the surface and breaking off. Maybe while they were coming up from the bottom of the pond to the surface – in that time – they felt that their lives would never end. They move up slowly, enjoying their time, getting nervous about the dark areas, getting excited by the fishes they see at times and finally reaching the surface of the pond. And then, they just burst. Some just get pinpricked by some growing plant in the pond and burst before they can reach the surface, ouch. Some remain attached to more pretty weed in the pond, and just burst there without coming up to the surface at all. Some of these bubbles see the light, the sun on top of the pond, and then release that tiny amount of atmosphere in them. The pond seems to be capturing that atmosphere, and making more bubbles as if it were recycling them. Looking down from the surface of the pond, it’s bottom kind of seems to be so much closer than the time it took for the bubble to reach the surface. Looking down from the surface of the pond, the bubble thinks to itself, wasn’t it just yesterday when I left the surface of the pond?

I know that I’ll feel like the bubble in some good years – so what’s the point in holding on to some moments and worrying about letting them go, or crying about the others when they will eventually be just gone (gone under the water). Fast forwarding my life to after 10 years – I know I will have a PhD, and looking back then the current time would seem momentary. Although I feel like a bubble that’s trapped in a layer of liquid that’s just not letting me perceive any motion, I know this time will also just seem momentary like the ones I’ve lived so far.