If Only It Never Ended
Do You Remember the Days When You Stopped Worrying?
How many people think about how terrifying all this beauty must be for someone with spring allergies, while sunny and blooming days remind everyone else of a fleeting paradise?
Maybe anxiety is like that too.
We hold on to everything beautiful as if it will last forever, because knowing it will pass stops us from fully living it.
The cruelest moment of happiness is the moment we are living it. As “if only this never ended” passes through our minds, the truth that it will end has already begun to seep in. As Alan Watts once said: if we feel the past and future so powerfully, perhaps we are not truly living in the present. This may be the most insidious form of melancholy and anxiety; it catches us not in our darkest moments, but in our most beautiful ones.
It is exactly then that we reach for our memories. Knowing that spring will come again is a reminder that happiness is not gone forever. Seneca saw this long ago: “Count each day as a separate life.” Perhaps this is why philosophers have always spoken of the importance of living in the moment.
Someone losing themselves in music, singing without wondering if their voice is good enough, dancing despite believing they never could. As Camus said, the meaning of life is to live it. This is the most real paradise happiness offers us. Neither the weight of the past nor the anxiety of the future. Just that moment.
But what if that moment is tomorrow? A minute ago? Yesterday? Asking that question is a war that anxiety has already won.
Maybe there is no need to wait for a perfect moment. Opening a window, playing a single song — these are enough to begin. And spring is always at the door.