A Moment in Time

It’s easy to overlook these moments. At first sight, they look rather routine or insignificant. They wouldn’t warrant a second glance whatsoever and you buzz past them at an alarming rate everyday. Perhaps it’s time to take a closer look.

There are of course, the firsts. The first time you locked eyes with someone at a gathering and didn’t know you would spend many a night sobbing at the other end of their telephone. The first time that you spotted your bride-to-be in a photograph that your childhood friend posted. The first time you knocked out cold on the host’s couch at a party, you didn’t think you would wake up to hot coffee and a long discussion of your slightly unhinged mutual friend. The first time you split a cab ride to work and did not suspect that it would lead to a second, and then a third.

There was also a last time that you rode your childhood bike around town. A last time you hugged someone before you lost them forever. A last time you visited a packed public space before you were forced to quarantine. A last time you had the chance to hold your baby in your arms before she grew up. These might not be the most pleasant to think about, but they are inevitable because they mark the end.

Then there are the moments you cannot categorize because they are too distinct to be bounded by a definition. Perhaps it’s the time you lingered outside the café, before you walked in and found an ad posted for your first job. It could be the time you adored an out-of-budget ring at the jewellery store, only to see it in a velvet box as he went down on his knees. It might even be the silent walk home, the moment right before tragedy hit as you found your mom gasping for breath with a hand on her chest. The calm before the storm.

All of these moments, they inherently carry a weight within them. You may not wholly feel this weight until the moment has passed you by, but it is there nonetheless. Ever-present and unrelenting. They are imprinted in the far corners of your brain, coming back to you on long nights when you can’t seem to fall asleep.

Could you argue then that we are nothing but an aggregation of these moments? Swayed towards a path by our firsts and left yearning over our lasts, we look for moments that fill the void left behind by their predecessors. We form connections with people who resonate with the glee, the thrill or the pain that our experiences saturated us with. These connections lead us through yet another journey of moments, commencing from the firsts and hoping never to encounter a last.