time traveller's wifi

the present is always a gift.

i need to take a step back and look at life as a whole. of course, i'm not gifted with a decent memory, so i can't clearly remember what had happened to me in the past. but i can at least spend time with people at different stages of their lives to simulate what i used to be and what i could become. everybody has a different perspective. there is foresight to gain from sharing the same lens of both the young and the old.

right now, i'm in a bad place. waking up marks the misery of my day. i have to force my way through a series of required encounters that fail to spark my enthusiasm. somehow at sundown, i still don't want to fall asleep because my backlog of to-dos my past self prepared remains to haunt me at present. but thankfully, it all ends when my body tells me to.

but in the past, i yearned for my present position. i wanted the wisdom, instead of pretending to know anything. i desired the power to decide on bigger things, instead of always being told what to do. i looked forward to gaining respect of what i had to say and what i did, instead of being prejudiced for who i was. but now, i wish to return to that situation. the clean slate free of stupid mistakes. the laid-back location where my screw ups are someone else's problem. the underdog opportunity to not have any expectations to fail. youth had its challenges, but it also brought benefits. i wanted to rush through my younger years so quickly because tomorrow always seemed to be better.

perhaps in the future, i will long for my current condition. it's the sweet spot for having sufficient financial security, freedom from family responsibilities and passable physical fitness. years from now, family will be unreachable, either by national borders or by physical planes. eventually, friends will part ways and their memories will serve as reminders of a bygone vitality. someday soon, my body will fail me from the times i decided to not take care of myself, because i had to business to take care of. as we age, we gain experiences that bring us deeper understanding, but we also lose all of those that accompanied us along the way.

life is a finite journey that precludes us from amassing everything infinitely. we can only carry so much, and what we choose to lift dictates the life we live.