Sometimes I wonder which part of my life I’ll desperately miss one day.
It’s indeed a strange thought to have while doing something completely unremarkable: chopping carrots to make chicken soup, leaving Claire Keegan’s Antarctica face down on the sofa before getting myself a cup of coconut water, looking out the window sometime around eight pm, noticing our made-up white curtain swaying in the gentle wind and realizing there is still so much light outside.
Nothing is really happening.
Or maybe, on the contrary, everything is happening.
Right here, right now.
I feel like I have lived long enough to know that these are exactly the kinds of things my memory likes to keep. Not necessarily the days I carefully planned. Not always the birthdays, holidays, achievements, or places I thought I would remember forever.
Sometimes what comes back to me years later is much smaller: the sound of someone’s familiar footsteps; moving around in the kitchen; the slow walk to a 24/7 mini market for a midnight snack; a song I played too many times one summer; a long ride home from a date, sitting in the back of the cab, feeling cold from the air conditioner but warm and giddy with hope and possibilities; the smell of coffee, ginger, and milk from a street-side stall; the particular way the afternoon light entered a room that doesn’t belong to me anymore…
And suddenly I miss these moments with an intensity that feels almost ridiculous; unreasonable.
Can we miss a life we didn’t even know we loved while we were living it?
***
We spend a surprising amount of our lives waiting for life to become memorable. Well, at least I used to.
I waited for the trip. The finished manuscript. The right person. The good news. The weekend. Summer. The version of myself who finally has everything a little more figured out.
Meanwhile, a Monday afternoon quietly passes.
I make lunch.
A friend sends me a voice message.
I water the plants.
I wipe the kitchen counter while listening to Deftones.
I complain about how hot it is inside the house.
I sit at my desk and do some work while soaking my feet in a bucket of cold water.
I wonder what to cook for dinner.
This is life: it is mostly made of days in which nothing really important happens.
***
Is nostalgia mostly about wanting the past back, or is it the shock of finally recognizing the value of something after we can no longer relive it?
Magically, memory has removed all the errands and discomfort, impatience and inconvenience. It only leaves the light, the warmth, the embrace, the familiarity, the sweetness.
And years later I think: “I didn’t know.”
I didn’t know that was a good time, a good year.
I didn’t know I would miss this place.
I didn’t know we wouldn’t always sit next to one another and pour our hearts out for hours.
I didn’t know I would be grateful for both the hellos and the goodbyes.
I didn’t know those versions of myself—confused, unfinished, anxious, insecure, worried about completely different things—would someday become someone I wanted to visit again.
Probably that’s why looking at old photographs can hurt a little. Everyone in the photograph is simply standing there, not fully realizing that once the moment is captured, we’re already inside a memory.
***
There are things I’m waiting for. There always are.
Things I’m trying to finish. The person I want to become. Things I haven’t figured out yet. The people I want to know more deeply.
There are mornings when I sit down at my desk and wish I were further along. There are afternoons that disappear into work and errands and things that need to be cleaned. There are dinners I make without thinking very much about them, just scraping together whatever I can find inside the fridge.
Books left unfinished beside the bed. A bottle of water here and a glass of cold tea there. Songs playing from another room. Dried clothes that need folding.
The familiar mess of everyday life.
And lately, sometimes, in the middle of all this, I try to look around.
Not because I need to make the moment special, but because I want to notice that this—all this—is happening, too.
This unfinished, unremarkable, slightly messy life is happening, too.
Maybe years from now, I will remember this summer for something I cannot predict. Maybe I’ll miss the view from this particular window, even though right now I feel like the sun is too strong. Maybe I’ll hear a song and immediately remember what it felt like to sit at this kitchen table, even though right now the table is a mess. Maybe I’ll find an old journal and be surprised by the things I was worried about, even though when I reread it, those things may feel like relics of the past. Maybe I’ll listen to the song I proudly make today, even though one day I might actually find it mediocre at best. Maybe I’ll miss this version of myself, the way I sometimes miss the old versions of myself… I don’t know.
And perhaps that’s the point: we don’t get to know which moments will become precious or which ones we won’t even remember a year from now.
We only get to be here now, while they’re all still ordinary, just another moment, another day.
***
This summer, I’m trying something.
Every once in a while, I ask myself: If I could come back to this exact moment ten years from now, what would I notice?
The long summer nights, when I walk home happily after a cold beer and kaasstengels in my summer dress? Those hours spent inside the studio, practicing the rudiments and making music? Those sweaty days dancing at music festivals or having iced matcha during a morning rave? Those random conversations with friends and strangers on a rooftop terrace past midnight? The person sitting next to me as I type these thoughts? My own hands, lifting a dumbbell, pressing lemons, writing a letter, carrying groceries home? The sight of the neighbors’ black-and-white cat in front of the elementary school? Or the strange privilege of simply being here, in a life that is still becoming something?
And then, I continue with my day. Because perhaps the life we’ll miss one day isn’t waiting somewhere ahead of us. Perhaps some of it is the life we’re forgetting we’re living right now.
