4:20 pm -- sondering some

Today, one of my friends sent me a link to a website called The Unsent Project. Essentially, it’s a digital mosaic of memories. It's a messy collection of unsent (obvi) messages, calls, emails, and thoughts. There are thank-you notes to childhood best friends, shy love confessions, angry rants at old exes, and goodbyes to people who are no longer alive.

Scrolling through, I felt sonder. It's a word I've come to use more and more often. It's that strange, humbling awareness that everyone around you lives a life as rich and complicated as your own. Every stranger on the bus, every name you’ll never know, has memories, inside jokes, heartbreaks, and triumphs. We walk through life seeing only fragments of others, but beyond that is an entire world we’ll never know. It’s both beautiful and kind of tragic to realize that we’re all complete universes colliding briefly-- too briefly for anyone to truly understand.

As I read through hundreds of messages, I noticed one phrase repeating often: In another life.

"In another life, maybe you were mine."

"In another life, maybe you never left."

"In another life, maybe I was the one who died"

It’s funny. I’ve used that phrase before, too. It's quite catchy. It feels almost comforting. It's the phrase I use when I don't want someone to pity me and I want to wrap up a conversation quickly.

But I don't actually believe in that. There isn't another life where everything magically works out. There’s only this one where we get one chance to love, to fail, to start again. The phrase is just a pretty lie we tell ourselves to soften regret.

Turning eighteen has made that thought more recurrent. I know I’m still young because people keep reminding me of that, but it’s a strange age. You’re old enough to realize how much time has gone by, but young enough to still think you have time. I look back and wonder how quickly those years slipped by. Life moves fast, faster than any of us expect, and I think about how easy it is to let it slip by while waiting for something “better” to happen.

Lately, I’ve noticed this trend in how people live. So many people live for the after. For 5 p.m., when work finally ends. For Friday, when the week is finally over. For vacation, for graduation, for someday. But all those hours in between are filled with purposeless sighs, scrolling, and daydreaming of what comes next. I think subconsciously, at some moments, I've believed that once I get into college, once I finish this thing, once I complete that thing, everything will be okay, and that's when I can finally start to live. But that's such a wasteful way of thinking.

This has been a year of reflection, and I've realized that my favorite parts of life aren't actually the grand award ceremonies or acceptances. It's the way my classmates in Lit make me coffee when I'm tired. It's the way my gov friend and I share boredom. It's the way my dogs' happiness level never decreases, no matter how many plain walks we go on. It's the way my friends and I groan about being tired, but at least we're being tired together.

Life will never reach a perfect point to start "living". There will always be deadlines, arguments, rent, and grief. If we wait for the chaos to clear before we allow ourselves joy, we’ll be waiting forever. So, I'm learning to enjoy the stress, the mundane, the fears.

I'm learning to enjoy doing homework late at night, because at least I have the comfort of my home. I'm learning to enjoy sitting in droning lectures, because at least I have friends with me. I'm learning to live more in each moment. Because this is it. This is our life. The only one we get. And so maybe the best thing we can do is stop waiting for Friday, stop dreaming of second chances, and start noticing the tiny bursts of joy that are already around us.

Cheers,

emma