On Ephemerality

The beauty is in the knowing and accepting the invitation to savour it all.

I’ve always loved the word “ephemeral”.

Dance is ephemeral. Perhaps that’s why I was so drawn to it from a very young age — or at least it’s partly the reason. Mostly, I love to move and I love beauty, and if I could marry the two together, even better. But the impermanence of it also had a certain allure. If the dance was imperfect (which it always was), it didn’t matter for long. What mattered was whether or not it moved the audience. The performance would, hopefully, linger in those who witnessed it. It was more precious because it couldn’t be captured in your hands like an object and taken home to hold onto forever. Instead, the dance now lived on in each person who had experienced it. And there was something exciting about that too — there was a risk and an acceptance that once the piece had been performed, it was now released into the world.

Life is also like that. It’s here for a time, then it’s gone. Even my memories are fleeting. I may think I’ll remember something forever, but my memories are not as perfect as I believe them to be in the moment. I don’t know how many times I’ve thought I would remember something only to find out later that it had slipped away. When my kids were little, those precious firsts that happen — first words, first steps, all the silly, cute things they say — I thought I would remember every one of them. Perhaps I was not always savouring the moment. Maybe my body was in one place, while my mind was in another. Or perhaps it was my brain’s way of pruning synapses to make room for new, more “essential” memories. I believe that the more I fully experience life, the more memories I’ll make and they’ll stay locked in forever. At the end of my life, all I will have left is my memories and I intend to make as many as I possibly can.

“We have agency, but we are not in control. We have to take risks, and love deeply, and soak up the sweetness of life wherever we can, because we never know how long we have. The only thing we know for sure, in any given moment, is this: We are here. We are alive. We are the lucky ones.” 

~

Beth Kempton

, adapted from KOKORO: Japanese wisdom for a life well lived.

These words have stuck with me as I’ve been contemplating how I want to spend my time. As I get older, I feel the ephemerality of life more deeply than ever before. I have a new sense of urgency about time lately. Is this me finally realizing that I’m in midlife and the hourglass is now half full? Or perhaps it’s the series of traumatic events that I’ve experienced in the past year making me acutely aware that life does not go on forever — not for me or for those I love. You never know when it will be your time to leave this earth.

We never know how long we have.

When I was young, I knew intellectually that life would not go on forever. But it was an abstract idea. Even when there wasn’t enough time in a day to get all the things done, there would always be tomorrow. The next day the number of hours would refresh and I’d have another chance to try again. But the hourglass is less than half full now, and there won’t be a refresh. I can’t flip it over and start again. At a certain point, there will be no more tomorrows and you never know when that last day will be. I wonder if I would have more reverence for each moment if I approached each experience as if it were the last. Would I savour my experiences more? Live in the present? Waste less time? Or would this knowledge cast a dark shadow? I suppose that’s up to me. I always have a choice.

Yesterday I celebrated my forty-ninth birthday. As I approached the day, I’d been thinking about the passage of time like I’d never done before. I have so many mixed feelings. The reality is hitting me that I’ve already lived more years than the amount I have left. At the same time, I’m grateful that I got to have another year. And, if things go as planned, I’ll get to have many more. There is so much more I would like to do and I’m afraid I won’t get to do it all. For the first time, this fact has made its way to my conscious mind and it makes me a little sad. But the more overwhelming feeling is that of gratitude for the new awareness this has created. Without this sense of urgency, I wouldn’t be living my life with as much intensity and purpose. I’m finally starting to realize it’s now or never. I can’t wait for “someday.” If I were still living under the illusion that I have plenty of time, I would not be putting my attention toward doing the things that are important to me. And not trying, not taking the risk, would be the real tragedy.

I’ve had this little joke with my friend Kim, who had been saying for years leading up to her fiftieth birthday, that she was “almost fifty”. Every year I told her not to speed it up, that she wasn’t quite almost fifty until she was forty-nine. I have refused to be “almost fifty” until my forty-ninth birthday, but that day has finally arrived. I heard on a podcast recently that people tend to take bigger risks and are more apt to make life-changing decisions just before the turn of their next decade of life, especially when approaching mid-life — at ages 29, 39 and 49. These are just numbers, but our perception of time and our expectations of what we think we should have accomplished by a certain age are very real. The urgency is more intensely felt as the next decade looms closer. Perhaps that is happening to me.

I can’t go back in time, but I can look at the choices I’ve made up to this point and decide which ones are moving me in the direction I want to go. Which ones are in alignment with my values, and which ones are an expression of the kind of person I want to be? It is the little decisions and the big ones, and the actions taken because of those decisions, that make me the kind of person I want to be. The kind of person I claim to be. I always have a choice. 

And right now, my choice is to live this day. I’ll come back here tomorrow, with my little keyboard and screen, and write about my hopes for tomorrow. And then I’ll see what I can do about making them happen.

This is me on my birthday in 2023, 5 days before my last day of chemo — and this year (2024) with a full head of hair! Grateful to have that year behind me and even more grateful to have been here another year.

Thank you for reading my words! As always, please feel free to comment below. Your thoughts are always welcome and appreciated. I’m so glad you’re here.

This is essay #3 in the 24 Essay Challenge with

Claire Venus

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