A moment, not a day.

We live in search of timelessness, looking for a glimpse of some beautiful eternal moment that won’t end, like a shoreless ocean. Our collective breaths held when the moment arrives, fearful we might breathe too deeply and it flutter away.

A song so perfect that you weep as you listen to it.

An embrace from a friend when you haven’t been touched in days.

A view so grand that you close your eyes in hope that you’ll burn it into your retinae.

A word so apt that you are invigorated with hope and remembrance.

A letter so needed that you weep in relief as you unfold its pages.

A friend so good that to just be in their presence is enough.

A moment so perfect you only grin.

Like an amputee feeling for where his body once was, I feel the ghost pains of remembrance for things lost, hopes unfulfilled, friendships faded, longings never met, and moments past. You can almost still feel the pain from their removal.

The moments when a hope is fulfilled or a longing is met feel so delicate that I hold my breath and move slowly, if at all, for fear of it alighting on me and being over. Like conversations you long to not end, so you reach for more topics. Or a silence so comfortable that you and others encapsulated by it say nothing.

Life is so wearisome and these moments so few and far between, that when they surprise and delight me by their sudden coming, I sometimes cry because I know it will end.

I want to stop everything and just stay in that moment. I want everyone around me to just be still and sense the timeless beauty they have walked in on.

We remember moments, not days.

Each perfect day, gives way to perfect moments. We don’t remember a day after a week has passed, nor a week after a month has gone.

But we hold onto the moments.

Moments where everything in us wants to hold tightly lest it prove as fleeting as the feeling it brings.

We each look for these moments of timelessness because we ourselves are timeless. These moments were meant to last for millennia, and for the feeling and the reality of its beauty to give way at just the right moment, not leaving us gasping, or hoping for it to never end.

It was never meant to end.

This is why when we think of the future we don’t imagine a perfect day but perfect moments. Being curled up on the couch enthralled in a book. Sitting, warmed by a fire and a loved one’s nearness. Playing with our children, dancing under the stars, gazing after a sunset, sipping coffee patiently, or taking a day so slowly that the world itself must slow to keep your pace.

We remember moments, not days.

There will be a time when days will not exist, but rather give way to one glorious day. All things made new, in one eternal moment of bliss, that never ends.

You weren’t made for countless days without number. You were made for one day. For one eternal day. One eternal moment. One moment that is just right. Timeless. Where a second may pass or 100 years but you don’t notice so you never wait for it to end. It won’t end. It was never meant to.

Breathe deeply. You won’t scare it away.