It is a bit like a curse. That insatiable itch. That oh, so human desire to know the future before the seeming snail’s pace in which we find ourselves encountering it.

The days are getting shorter again. Which brings relief in its early stages. And trusting that they will grow longer again after a few turns, incentivizes another reach above, beyond and forward. And another after that. And, another still, fate willing. Until the road runs out, and no new ways are left for this single soul to make.

Though, it could and has been argued that we never know such a thing. That all we ever know is our present, and that tainted recollection we call memory. I have even heard argue that the present is even something never quiet in our reach. About how our fleshy processing units are always, just ever so slightly behind in perceiving what is that it is only ever what had just been and is no longer.

But that is a debate between the scientists and poets. One that may continue in perpetuity.

None of that shakes the want of knowing what is yet to come. Even the reflection of former desires for times now past and knowing now what you had wish you had known then, does little satiate the urge for more. The ponderances of roads that might have been gone down. The wonder about anniversaries of other wives, as you have none your own. The deeds might have been, if other action were taken at times aside the ones through which we travel. The would have been infecting the what will be.

Such wishes are selfish. And destructive towards the natural flow at which all our sentience and physical world march. To dream of a life while the one you’ve got slips in granular arraignment from the mind, right between the fingers. Rip Van Winkle without a rewind. The inattentive passing by of what is, as it marches towards the oblivion of the past. Missing the journey, looking for the end.

But I am not as guilty as I make myself to seem. Nor are you, I’d imagine. And the shackles of shame are not unmanageable or infinite.

Yet, I still wonder what tomorrow may bring. Perhaps some surprise that I would not have otherwise observed. Perhaps something shattering to the self-made status quo. Something unseen with foundation moving amplitude. Or, perhaps, just another day. One, that though pleasant, would not amount to anything worthy of even gazing upon the title of extraordinary.

I assume that this is thought, in some way, by most thinking beings in proximity. Though I also know for certain, that the ponderings I have upon these fleeting moments are not being felt in universal synchronicity. Plenty of people having times that are far different from mine. Some tragic. Anxious. Sublime or divine, or otherwise inexplicable. There is loss and gain in harmony and refrain throughout all existence. Dissonance, resolution and the walk up and down, etc. Birth, death, and that stuff between. Life, or whatever.

And upon this slow-motion decay, I seem only present in reflection and wonder of the imperceivable impending. I know my ultimate fate of worm food, whenever it is the endless specter finds me. And little more than my cowardice, or conscious dissent, relents what little power I wield in finding the way forward.  

But it won’t always be this way. At some point, granted some sustained cognition, the look back will be vastly more than what still may be. The hourglass with not much more that gravity can take, will someday be the state of your humble narrator. I hope for peace, in such moments. But I suppose that is up to my own protagonist decisions. Just as the one previous, led here. So it shall, further down the road.

I don’t know if any idea was achieved, here. Or sculpted out of something larger and cruder. All I know, is some time had passed, and some words from my head were set in the stone of this age. And, I feel worth in that. Whether there is or not, remains unseen. But to believe, it is often argued, is an essential part of existence.

Or so, I’ve been led to believe.