Beauty and the Brief

Remember how it felt to be eighteen? 

The staggering freedom of living with friends, no parents, no rules. An open frontier of selfhood rolled out before you. Filled to the brim with the excitement of youth. 

Eighteen-year-old me relished those feelings. But bliss came paired with an awareness of brevity. Even my freshman-year self sensed the fleeting nature of these “good old days”. One moment stands out: walking home one night from a football game. Warm light from our dorm spilling out into the midnight. As we neared the door, a dad (40? 50?) pointed toward the brick. “See kids, that’s where I used to live. My old dorm.” His kids rolled their eyes. I took notice. 

A proud alum back to visit. A wistful gaze at his old home. Memories of days long gone, never to return. What would this middle-aged man give for one more night with his buddies, sipping bourbon and pondering life deep into the night? We walked by him, toward the amber glow, into his faded dream.

In that moment I felt the bittersweet split of time’s two-faces: the beauty and the brief. These joyful college years would soon give way to life’s relentless melt, and we’d soon enough be standing on that hillside thinking back to these very moments. But how sweet to know, not tonight! Tonight the glowing hallway was ours. It had passed through decades of hands before, and decades more would follow. But for a nine-month sliver, this precious space belonged to us. 

Now zoom out with me. From nine months in a golden hallway to 90 years beneath a golden sun. The point remains. Life is finite, we’ll be gone soon, just like all who passed before. Glimpsing a black-and-white photo does it for me: all those smiling faces, now dead, replaced by us, and soon to be eclipsed by those not yet born. 

How does this bedrock of the human condition make you feel? Do you bend toward the bitter or the sweet? Life is fleeting and finite, what a raw deal? Or do you marvel at the miracle of us being here at all? This brief slot of time, right now, when this brilliant world belongs to us? 

I’ll defer my answer to a certain John Paul Sartre, subject of many black-and-white photos, now dead: 

“There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours.”