This is an excerpt from my private diary. It is dated during the summer before my freshman year at Marquette University.
July 8, 2008
Dear Nate,
Today, on The Bridge connecting Raynor and Memorial Library, I saw a man sit down on a bench on the block across from me. He sat there for at least an hour – maybe three. I couldn’t think of anything he could possibly be doing except just standing still.
Sometimes I think we need that. We need to just stand in the current and feel it. You get numb when you run with it. Recover your senses.
As I continued to study, I was able to do something I’ve always wanted to do: Watch the day, specifically the evening, progress into night. It was almost depressing. The thought of “never enough time” went through my mind. I was watching time go away, and I know with every fiber of my being that I really never want to grow up. I’m in college now, man. Time keeps on moving. “Time keeps up slippin’, slippin’, slippin’. . . into the future.”
[Paragraph removed for privacy]
Love to you.
There are a few things I’d revise in this entry (you get numb by standing in the current, the somewhat embarassing Steve Miller Band/Space Jam reference), but I’m going to leave it as is. My only reflection is that I once wrote to a dear friend that the only things in life we ever want are love and time. I don’t know how true that is, or how true it will remain, but I will readily admit that I want to love, be loved, be with the ones I love (and ones that I have the opportunity to love), and do the things I love — forever. Who wouldn’t want love, in every sense of love, to last forever? Love possesses an innate quality in that the desire for it is limitless in duration. We may grow tired of what we love, but that doesn’t mean that our desire for it wanes. ((I love the Gilmore Girls, but if I watch two seasons in a day, if that is possible, I’ll get tired of the show. I still love it, but I just need a break.)) Love is unlimited, yet demands healthy moderation.
continuu 