Herkie the Dog's World Musings
Time Passages
A couple of weeks ago, I opened up a virtual time capsule. No, not an internet document of some long forgotten history, but a foot locker in our closet that had lots of things from “last century.” It was an absolute flash flood…a torrential downpour of memories. There were newspaper clippings, lots of birthday cards and notes from Lisa, programs of events we’d attended in college, just after college, before the dog arrived, before Christie arrived…a ton of things that functioned as snapshots of who we were years ago.
It was really cool to look back like that, to see ourselves and our friends with the knowledge of what’s happened since then. It’s like watching characters in the first season reruns of a long running TV series, viewing how they were like as compared to the current eighth or ninth season. You can see how individual threads in people’s lives back then came together to form the tapestry of what it is now.
It’s always interesting to try to track the gradual process of change, to see which events started things happening. Only in very rare instances can you actually feel it happening at the time. More often, it’s only with hindsight that you can get a clear picture of how amazingly important a seemingly insignificant event was to your life. You can see how a simple decision to make a phone call or a chance meeting put you directly on the path you’re on today. And it also allows you to realize how different your life would be if certain things happened in another way or not at all. The path to now, to who you are today, seems more fragile than the most brittle glass when viewed in such a way. And yet once laid down, it becomes harder than diamonds.
It’s an appropriate thought as we close in on the end of another year. Not just remembering the things you’ve done, but also the people who have helped set the chain of events in motion. Some people you still see on a daily basis, others never heard from again. Certainly it fits in with the old song that will be played come January 1 at 12:00 AM. You know the one. It’s about remembering old friends that you forgot…or maybe it’s about remembering that you forgot those old friends. Because if you’ve forgotten them in the first place, how are you supposed to remember them?
It was really cool to look back like that, to see ourselves and our friends with the knowledge of what’s happened since then. It’s like watching characters in the first season reruns of a long running TV series, viewing how they were like as compared to the current eighth or ninth season. You can see how individual threads in people’s lives back then came together to form the tapestry of what it is now.
It’s always interesting to try to track the gradual process of change, to see which events started things happening. Only in very rare instances can you actually feel it happening at the time. More often, it’s only with hindsight that you can get a clear picture of how amazingly important a seemingly insignificant event was to your life. You can see how a simple decision to make a phone call or a chance meeting put you directly on the path you’re on today. And it also allows you to realize how different your life would be if certain things happened in another way or not at all. The path to now, to who you are today, seems more fragile than the most brittle glass when viewed in such a way. And yet once laid down, it becomes harder than diamonds.
It’s an appropriate thought as we close in on the end of another year. Not just remembering the things you’ve done, but also the people who have helped set the chain of events in motion. Some people you still see on a daily basis, others never heard from again. Certainly it fits in with the old song that will be played come January 1 at 12:00 AM. You know the one. It’s about remembering old friends that you forgot…or maybe it’s about remembering that you forgot those old friends. Because if you’ve forgotten them in the first place, how are you supposed to remember them?
posted by Jon at
3:26 PM
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