A TALE OF TWO MOMENTS WHEN TIME STOPPED
During Spring break in college one year, I went with a group of friends to the Black Sea. One evening I walked solo on the beach. The waves were crashing loudly and powerfully against the stones. The darkness was dotted with hotel lights, voices, and music. I looked at the sky. It was a clear evening, with stars crowded above me. I was no longer a child, a teenager. I was 21, which felt like I was an adult, with the childhood forever behind me. The future was rushing toward me, and I watched it crash into me, like the waves around me. There was no stopping it. It was forever coming, and coming, and coming. This meant that I would someday be 31, then 41. Then, one day, I would die.
I stopped, like I was just about to fall in a deep wide abyss. How could the world go on, without me here? In the face of the realization that life on earth would continue to go on just as before, without me to witness it, made my breath stop, and felt like I was suspended somewhere above, looking down at the beach I was standing. I could in any moment go back to the group of friends I was with, go out dancing, lose myself in music, in bright colored lights of the club I was headed to. I would go there now, and live my life as if it was going to be forever. I hovered a bit longer above the beach, puzzled, confused at what I just discovered. I soon left and joined my friends, went out dancing, and left that part of myself back at the beach. The present was here, and I was young, and I was loving every second out on the dance floor, laughing with girlfriends, flirting with boys, and once in awhile I’d look a the stars. They were out there, full of knowledge, of foreverness, of wisdom I was going to begin to listen to one day when I was ready.
There was no going back though. The feeling of abyss, of emptiness, of fear, of puzzlement didn’t go away, and it would not go away for a very long time. My own mortality was shocking, unacceptable. There was no way that I would ever get old, that I would die. I went out there in the real world, had as much fun as I could have, study, work hard, busy dating, making new friends, imagine paths for my career and my future, endless ways to keep busy and to never think about that night at the beach, or of the abyss looming in front of me. My 20s were no different than yours, I imagine? It was a period of fun, hard work, adventures, and emotional drama. I was working my way through the first circle of my life - that of finding a path to allow myself to grow professionally, to earn enough money to afford a place to live, money to go out to restaurants and clubs and vacations.
Then, one day in March 1999, in my mid twenties, I met a beautiful man. The world lit up. My heart swelled, and every pore of my body was open and thirsty for him. My mind was enveloped in a soothing heat, my soul was happy. Life started to make sense, justice had been made. I had been thinking during my early twenties that there is a man out there, far away, waiting, like me, for us to cross paths. I was certain he was out there. I could picture him. He was gorgeous, kind, loving, and inspiring. He would breath new life in me. When I met him, I felt carried by every word he uttered, by his body’s moves, into a world of constant happiness.
When our baby girl was born, I held her on my chest, and said “I’m officially happy.”
That day back at the Black Sea beach, a decade ago, seemed so far away. I had travelled on my path for a long time, and now time had stopped again. My little baby was cuddled on my chest, bundled up in a little white cotton blanket, soft, and powerful. I held her, as I still do now, close to my heart, and I look at that abyss with joy. It’s no longer a space that scares me, it’s the space inhabited by happiness and love. The very source of life runs through that abyss
