“Why do you always look at me like that?”, she blushed heavily and asked him. He kept gazing into her big brown eyes for a while, took a heavy breath, and replied, “Because I don’t know if I’ll ever get a chance to see you this close again.” Suddenly, the smitten look on her face was replaced by one that was as grim as the cloudy skies they sat under. “Don’t worry, if the world ever takes you away from me, I’ll meet you at the end of our lives and take you along with me. We’ll ask God to fuse our souls together into one unbreakable piece, tied together with the love we shared. So that nothing can tear us apart again.” She looked on in silence and tears. “You will come, right?”, he asked. “Yes”, she replied.
He kissed her forehead and told her to stop crying. “I’m here today, and today is what matters.”

It has been years since he last saw her. The tears have parched up, and the path they flowed down has become hard and dry. Memories may never fade away, but memories cannot bring back what’s lost. The work of memories in our lives is not to hurt us by reminding us of a moment forgone, it is to prepare us for what comes ahead. Memories are moments that build up into experiences and teach us not to make the same mistakes in life that we once did. If it’s a good memory, then it helps us figure out ways to make our future lives better. But if we keep dwelling on one particular memory for long, it becomes our very own self-destruct button, and then it doesn’t matter if that memory is a good or a bad one.

If the memory we decide to stay with is a particularly good one, it will eventually lead us to believe that all we have today is worthless, and we will keep hoping for a moment that’s as good and sweet as the memory we hold so dear. We begin weighing all the good that come our way to that particular moment, and it always comes out to be lesser than expected. This leads to developing a sense of loneliness. Loneliness not in terms of people in our life, but in terms of emotions in our heart. Happiness should not be weighed upon a scale because happiness is happiness, even if it exists in the smallest of things.

On the other hand, if the memory that resides with us is a bad one, it will eventually consume all the good that comes our way, even if we don’t want it to. If you hold on to the pain, the pain will become your way of life. You might even begin to like the pain, because that’s the nature of pain. It attracts all the broken pieces within us and gives them a place to stay. It provides the broken parts of us with a sense of belonging, because pain is what we are made of. But letting that agony control your acts, that is where you will go wrong. Like everything, that pain has a role to play in our lives. It teaches us that there’s more to this world than love. It makes us hard inside, coagulating all those broken pieces into one giant rock that crushes all hopes for a better world. That is, of course, if you allow it to grow.

The essence of life lies in striking a balance between the two. Holding on is easy, but letting go is much easier, if only one tries. Because nothing in this life is permanent. Not even you.