Monday, June 19, 2017

Vanished Worlds

I had a vivid memory come to mind the other day. It was of a winter night, with a stove in a house in Damascus covered in chestnuts and orange skin peels. It is winter, there are people visiting. The smell of coffee is in the air. The house is long gone, and so are the people in the memory. Some dead, while the others are scattered around the globe.

I sometimes wish I'd spent more time taking pictures of the street we lived in, of the neighbours, of the people we lived with and shared happy times with. It's all different now, all changed, and I accept in my heart that it can never come back. The thing about those times was that they felt so mundane, and so boring. A bit like the present moment as I sit typing this in an office and pretend to look busy with work. I heard a quote by an unattributed Russian writer once, "we fear the future, which quickly becomes the present that we hate, and then the past that we miss". That's so true, and it sums up the human condition so well.

When the revolution started I used to feel sad for that vanished world, and I do miss it, but there are other worlds for me, and different futures to create. We're not meant to live in the past. The future isn't written yet, and there is still so much more to live for.

No comments: