You're Going to Miss the Life You're Rushing Through.

“If we are lucky, we get to experience around eighty summers.” I came across that sentence recently, and it made me slow down. Eighty summers. Eighty seasons of warm evenings, open windows, sun-warmed skin, golden light stretching into the night. Eighty chances to sit somewhere beautiful and realise: I am here. I am alive. I am experiencing this.

And yet, how often do we spend our summers waiting for summer to begin? Waiting for the perfect holiday. The perfect version of ourselves that will finally allow us to relax into our own lives. Somehow, we become so focused on reaching the next moment that we forget we are already standing inside one.

My thoughts drifted as I sat watching waves crash against the pavement, the sea endlessly arriving and leaving, arriving and leaving. There was something almost poetic about it, the water never trying to hold onto the shore, never fighting the fact that its nature was simply to come and go.

Recently, I have found myself sitting with the idea that everything is temporary. Everything is temporary, even the things that feel permanent. And strangely, there is comfort in that.

There is a Japanese concept called mono no aware, often translated as "the pathos of things." It is the deep awareness of the beauty, sadness, and tenderness that comes from knowing everything is fleeting. It is the feeling you get when you watch the last light of a sunset disappear, knowing that exact sky will never exist again.

It is the bittersweet feeling of looking back at an old photograph and realising that version of yourself, that exact moment, that exact person, only existed once.

Mono no aware does not ask us to become detached from life. It asks us to become more present in it because when we realise things are temporary, they become a little more precious.

I think, for a long time, I held onto things too tightly. I waited for things to become permanent before allowing myself to fully enjoy them. I wanted reassurance that the job would last, the friendship would last, the person would stay, that happiness would remain exactly as it was.

But who told us life offers guarantees?

We spend so much time trying to secure things that were never ours to own in the first place. We love people, but we cannot freeze time with them. We build careers, but we cannot promise they will never change. We grow older, but we cannot remain the same person forever.

We live in a generation that captures everything but experiences very little of it.

We can watch thousands of moments unfold every day through a screen. Ten-second clips of someone else's life, someone else's holiday, someone else's happiness, while missing the quiet moments happening directly in front of us.

We document everything because we are afraid of forgetting. But sometimes, in trying so hard to preserve a moment, we forget to actually live it.

The irony is that we often only realise the beauty of something once it has disappeared.

We miss the old house after we move out.

We miss the ordinary conversations after someone is gone.

We miss the season of life we once desperately wanted to escape.

How many times have we looked back and thought:

"I wish I had slowed down."

"I wish I wasn't so worried."

"I wish I'd known I couldn't control everything."

Because the truth is, although we have some control over our lives, we never have complete control. Perhaps some of our greatest anxiety comes from trying to command things that were always meant to flow. The future will arrive whether we panic about it or not. So why do we spend so much of today living in tomorrow?

Not to be a downer, but what if there wasn't a tomorrow? Tomorrow is never guaranteed.

What if all you had was today?

Would you look at it differently?

Would you listen more carefully?

Would you complain less?

Would you notice the little details you usually rush past?

Because this moment, whatever it is, even as you read this for the first time, will never happen again. Even as I sit here writing this on holiday, I know I will never get this exact afternoon back. The sound of these waves. This version of myself. This feeling of being here. It belongs only to today.

There is a saying that goes,

"We are a mosaic of everyone we have met and everything we have experienced."

When I think about that, I think about all the conversations that have quietly shaped me. The strangers I spoke to once and never saw again. The places where I allowed myself to belong. The friendships that lasted years and the ones that lasted only a season. Every person and every experience leaves some kind of lesson behind, whether good or bad, even if we don't recognise it at the time.

Some become chapters. Some become entire books. But all of them become part of the story. And still, we were only passing through.

There is a beautiful scene in Before Midnight where a character reflects on losing her husband and how, over time, she slowly forgets the small details about him. Yet sometimes, when she closes her eyes, she can still picture his face perfectly. She captures something deeply human:

"Just like our lives, we appear and we disappear. And we are so important to some, but we are just passing through."

Perhaps that is the most humbling truth about being alive. We are constantly becoming. The person you were five years ago no longer exists in quite the same way. Your beliefs may have changed. Your dreams may have changed. Your understanding of yourself certainly has.

So we are temporary, even within ourselves. Every version of us arrives, teaches us something, and eventually makes space for the next. Maybe the purpose of life is not to hold onto everything forever.

Maybe it is to love things while they are here. To appreciate the season while we are living it. To receive joy without immediately wondering when it will disappear. To remember that even the hardest seasons are temporary too.

When life is beautiful, let yourself be fully present. When life is painful, remember it will not always feel this way. Nothing stays exactly as it is. And that is both the sadness and the gift. So not in another lifetime.

This one.

The one you get.

Slow down.

Taste.

Touch.

Feel.

Notice.

While you can.

---

Photo ©  Gracie Adams Photographed by Adrianna Hall