Late night, The Smiths’ song ‘Asleep’ echoes in the background in a somber empty parking lot right outside a convenience store. You sat on one of the pavements while sipping on a tetra-pack OJ. As you look at the nothingness of the night with the lights from the lampposts and cars passing by turning your vision into bokeh, your heart starts to flutter with the familiarity of the feeling—of the scene. You long for the simplicity of how things were before. You long for the feeling of midnights embracing you with the comfort of security. An immense craving to rediscover the spot that turned you into you. 15 minutes in and you’re already drowning in a pool of nostalgia. Reminiscing all the things that had been. Recollecting how things, places, and sounds made you feel back then.
Like you, many of us drift through this borrowed time in search of not just meaning, but reason. A reason behind losing friends, reason for not getting the promotion you worked hard for, reason why you’d one day lose something you’re almost certain never to lose. You find reasons in places that led you to where you are now. But backtracking your steps gave no answers, nor clues. They offer nothing but a sheer reminder that sometimes in life, there are steps you can no longer take back because things seldom stay the way they were. A constant reminder that as the season changes, things change, too, just like you.
TWO STEPS FORWARD, ONE STEP BACK
You trace your steps hoping that it’ll lead you back to where you’ve once found peace, but walking through the city in search of peace is like drifting through an old neighborhood you once knew well, but now feels distant and foreign. The streets lining up with echoes of forgotten conversations and faces that have long since faded. Each step feels heavier, as if the city itself has grown tired, its once-familiar corners now tinged with a quiet, unspoken loss.
Yet, you keep walking, hoping to stumble upon something you recognize, something to anchor you amid the blur, but all that remains is the steady hum of the city—a lullaby you no longer know how to hear.
But as the longing for a time that is no longer accessible, yet still lingering in memory grows stronger, an epiphany washes every inch of your skin. Your muscles start to relax and your heart starts to beat in a calm rhythm. You begin to accept the inevitability of change, the futility of trying to reverse it, and the harsh truth of impermanence. And in this late-night stroll, with the echoes of this city, in the most perfect of places, the moment introduces you to a new, but utterly familiar feeling— the ache of nostalgia.
The dissonance between past and present, and the difficult but essential acceptance of change. Through it all, you abandon all the arrogance in your body and embrace the humility of knowing that just like everybody else, you too need to keep taking forward steps. Even when everything around you shifts, even when you are no longer the person you once were, there is only one thing left to do: continue.
