Imagine a world where people live each day like it was their last. An ordinary dawn like every other dawn is always the world’s first dawn. An ordinary midnight like the hundred of midnights that passed is always their life’s first midnight.
In a world such as this, people are young and free. They have all the time in the world to dance, sing, learn and love. They eat and drink knowing there’s no tomorrow. There’s an unmistakable air of youth and enthusiasm, of ideologies, discoveries and inventions. Eager individuals seize the day. They are seen seriously discussing the abstract, tapping the mysteries of life and the universe. They are seen lavishly killing time to smell the roses, to listen to birds’ first song and celebrate life.
In a world where people live each day like it was their first, people don’t have memory. They don’t have recollection of the lives before them or the days before this day and the nights before this night. No, they can’t recount the faces of their mothers, fathers, their sons and daughters, and their lovers. They can’t remember friendships made or wars fought yesterday. They are people who live individual, separate lives.
But if there’s one thing memory cannot teach them, it is that it cannot teach people to grow tired, to get bored, to know what routine is, to get jaded. It doesn’t matter that they repeat the same mistakes they did yesterday, which was committed a couple of days ago, a week ago, some months ago, years ago. In a world without history, people do not learn anything past a day. It doesn’t matter that they get hurt each day for the same reason, by the same person. In a world without memory, people are compelled to forgive and forget. It doesn’t matter that they failed over and over in all the days of their life. In a world without recollection, people do not get numb and become indifferent. Where lives are compressed in one day, time doesn’t dull people’s passions and aspirations. Time doesn’t make people’s zest for living any less than yesterday. Where nostalgia is non-existent, there is no wistfulness in remembering.
In a world without memory, people are free from responsibility of deeds past, free from remembering tragedies where families died, friends and lovers left. Where people are bound to get a brand new life each day, just for the day, without yesterday to shape today and no tomorrow to look forward to today, people’s lives are like books with stories for the first half and empty pages for the rest–all of them never learning, half written stories or less. Where history is a strange concept people cannot grasp, they curse and worship it. They write myths and legends about the past, fumbling in the dark, forever asking who they are.
In a world where people live each day like it was their first, everyday is the first laugh, the first discovery, the first love the same way everyday is the first anguish, the first hatred, the first fear. But in this world, happiness, like sadness doesn’t last. There’s always tomorrow when life begins for the first time, when the sun rises from the east for the first time, when the sun sets to the west for the first time and the world ends for the first time.
Imagine a world where people live each day like it was their last. An ordinary dawn like every other dawn is always their life’s last dawn. An ordinary midnight like the hundred of midnights that passes is always the world’s last midnight.
In this world’s last morning like any other morning, the mood is contemplative, if not solemn. There is a constant reminder that life may only persist for as long as the day could last. Every moment is an opportunity to cherish. For each more heartbeat, there is infinite gratefulness for the gift of life.
In a world where people live each day like it was their last, time is relatively slower. Every second is an eternity. A whole existence of broken heart can be healed in an instant. A life span’s worth of understanding can happen in a moment. A lifetime of absence from another person’s life can be filled in a second. A hundred transgressions can be forgiven in a minute.
In a world where people live each day like it was their last, a child is holding a friend’s hands and never wanting to let go. A girl is getting her last kiss from her lover. A son is receiving a final embrace from his mother. At another place, a man is content with the bitterness of remembering. Pictures of long gone loved ones and things that were left unsaid. Others behave like ghosts, residing in dusty shelves of photographs, afraid to live, ever longing, ever remembering.
In a world where people live each day like it was their last, memory is a powerful force. It is as if people had lived only to remember and be remembered in return even if in the end, there’ll be nobody left to remember. No, they cannot lead bounded, separate lives. They are always tied to someone else’s memories. People live in memoirs and take whatever it is recollection brings along with itself, whether it brings meaning, responsibility, reason, guilt or resentment. People cannot escape it. Memory shapes today, making past and present almost the same. Memory justifies what people do today.
In a world where every second that passes adds to the world’s nostalgia, there’s an insistent yearning for some past no matter how close or distant. People recall friendships made and wars fought yesterday. They find something in there that they’ve never seen before. Because they’d attach with it some purpose, even if it had to be vague, even more if they really didn’t know, they had to believe there’s some purpose to everything. While some people try as they might, but they could only hear the same tune, smell the same scent, see the same things over and over as they relive the same memory with blank stares.
In a world where people live each day like it was their last, they ultimately recount the faces of mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, even if it meant remembering, too the same mother or father who died yesterday. The same sons and daughters who were estranged. The same friends and lovers who left. It doesn’t matter, in a world where memory is longer than time, people are compelled to forgive. Forgetting inevitable comes at the end of the day.
In a world where people live each day like it was their last, every day is the last laugh, the last discovery, the last love the same way everyday is the last anguish, the last hatred, the last fear. In a world where people live each day like it was their last, people wake up to their last morning where the sun rises from the east for the last time, where the sun sets to the west for the last time, taking with it, the same sun, the world, their memory and life.
Inspired by Alan Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams
