Am nostalgic

I think I was just born this way—to constantly dwell on the past, to constantly ruminate about the future, to think about that one time I was walking home from work in the sunshine and joking around with my friend and thought, This is absolutely perfect; this is as good as life will ever get, and wish I could freeze the moment in amber.

Buddhism, I am told, teaches that everything is temporary and we need to make peace with that and free ourselves from the impulse to try to recreate the past in the future. Even if I could choreograph the same walk with the same friend and the same sunny day, it wouldn’t be the same, because I have changed, right? The truth is that it’s sunny right now—I’m looking out the window at it, I can see it—and here I am mcfucking around on the computer instead of trying to make friends or whatever.

I am afraid of getting old. I have met many old people who spent their life saving up for a dream house, bought it at age 60, and enjoyed it for maybe five years of retirement before they started having endless health issues and the house was too much work and too multi-storied to spark joy anymore. What’s the point of striving if it’s all going to melt away, you know? But it doesn’t have to be like that—we could find meaning in the process, we could smile because it happened.

I shouldn’t drink so much coffee.