You don’t build a life in a day. The memories of your childhood trapped softly between the pages of a familiar book is what lays the groundwork, really. The rainy days set the music and the tone of what’s to come. Spending monsoons in your room by the window without much to do and growing up, realising you’re never sitting near the window again, is what you eventually learn life is about.
It’s about remembering. Life was all about remembering the little bits. It was of remembering the kiss from three years ago as the rain pattered on the windshield. It was about remembering enough to love, to try to love again and again. It’s also about forgetting. It was about forgetting everything and starting a new life in another city. It was in forgetting just enough and not a smidge more, so you continue to love again and again.
But love is not all life is about. It was about the certain snack you can’t decline when offered. It was about the specific way you folded your laundry because you did it like that once and never changed. Or, the cup of chamomile you brew every night because someone rubbed their habit on you. It was about the catchphrase you stole from an old acquaintance. It was about your brother’s mannerisms you didn’t realise you ended up copying.
Life wasn’t just taking, too. It was about giving. The best part, in fact, was the giving. It was in lending a hand even when your arms were tired of the weight you already had on them. How difficult could helping someone with directions be, really? It was how you often found yourself when you were lost. It was about finding yourself in others.
Life was about the time a little girl walked up to you and showed you her origami and you acted all excited at the genuinely remarkable piece of art. Life was about keeping that experience and many others in your heart as you sat down to write a few words, creating art of your own, resting on the shoulders of ecstatic kids creating something only because they could.
You didn’t build a life at all, really. It just sort of happened to you. It has always been this way for everyone who has lived, and I don’t quite see a reason for that to change.