The Point of Return

Hello Friends,

Welcome back to my widely-read blog. Now, now, don’t get jealous. Trust me, I write only to you.

It has been nearly a year since my last entry. So where does life find me you ask? Have you ever had a moment where you doubted a memory? Logically, you know that the event occurred in your life. Usually, you have evidence. You can look at pictures, you may have a special memento, you may even have a physical scar from the experience. Still, for some reason, when you reflect on that moment in time, it seems too far away, too abstract, and too contrasting to life as you now know it, to really believe it happened. This strange state of disbelief is where life finds me.

This time last year, I was in the City of Eternal Spring. In fact, at this time, I was most likely sitting in the tranquil Café Alondra, taking in the warm air and even warmer cappuccino at my table. I was probably listening to the city come alive as the last bit of sun crept under the surrounding mountains. With live music serenading my thoughts from the club nearby, I was most likely writing in my journal. The entry likely reflecting something like this, “Never forget this moment. Take it all in.”

Fast forward one year (I write this next paragraph solely for dramatic effect of contrast, not to perpetuate pessimism). Currently, there is no sun in the forecast for the upcoming week. Spring has not yet rendered anything more than 3 days of sunlight. Ambulances blare outside my window, as profanities echo through dark ally ways that one would be smart not to venture by after 10:00pm. Despite the fact that it’s April, I am a long way from the City of Eternal Spring.

However, before you cry for me Argentina, this is not an entry of paradise lost. Far from, actually. The point of this blog is simply astonishment. Astonishment at the pace life takes us from point A, to point B and then to a point beyond Z. Moments that at once seemed frozen in time, can be shot back to the back of your mind so quickly, you question if they were ever really there. Yet, they were indeed there. YOU were indeed there.

How do we react to this sling-shot affect of reality? What do we do when we find ourselves in a completely unexpected place and our memories are nothing but a slightly detectible dust trail behind us?

I don’t believe this dust trail of memories exists to make us nostalgic or regretful. Maybe these “memory particles” left behind simply exist to remind us that we were brave enough to blaze a trail unlike any we have ever traveled before. Perhaps, point A only exists to contrast point B, and the memories of both points only exist to push us to point beyond Z. Either way, when we take the time to realize where we’re at, the rate at which we arrived there, can be astonishing.