There comes a moment when we choose to live . . . to really live

It’s funny what we remember. 

Sometimes it’s little things and sometimes bigger things. But I’m always surprised at the little snippets we retain. I traveled to Hong Kong with my family when I was 12. On the way to the hotel from the airport, a man was hit by a taxi and thrown high in the air. He came down on his knees, hands together and head bowed in prayer when he landed. Our taxi moved on.

We move on, too. If we get stuck in the past, or stuck unable to reconcile our past, then we are forever frozen. We’re creatures that ultimately need forward movement if we are to survive and prosper. Our lives are an ebb and flow, but over time we need that forward movement. If we get stuck for too long, our lives devolve and we begin to lose our perspective not just on the future, which in our mind disappears, but also on the present, where we begin to limit our contacts and exposure, perhaps to limit our vulnerability or because we feel the only way we can survive is to turn into ourselves, a cocoon . . . fooled into thinking we’re warm and protected.

It’s an illusion. We’re weaker alone.

As the things we once held dear and important begin to fall away, like untended plants sitting alone in a corner, we find ourselves less tolerant, shorter with others and more determined insulate ourselves. But after a while we begin to die. The things that made us strong no longer interest us. Our friends have waited patiently for us to return, but we don’t. Sometimes we lash out at them, as if our floundering is their fault. It happens when we can’t see ourselves clearly. At its worst, we slap away the hands of those reaching for us.

Sooner or later those hands recede into the clouds of our isolation.

Isolation, depression, and either we grab for those hands, refocus, and feel the strong grips of those who have helped us and strengthened us before, or we baste in our own misery, thinking it isn’t misery, just a need to be alone. But we’ve stopped moving forward and aren’t making peace with our past, or reconciling our missteps, closing those doors behind us and taking responsibility for ourselves and how we’ve lived. We’re dying and don’t even know it.

There comes a moment . . .

Our past will always be with us. We all wrestle with that. Only when we take the time to slam those doors and move on, though, are we really living. That’s the moment we choose to live.