A Song for Embracing the Present Moment

It was the first nice day in Boston in months. 

It might as well have been years.

Winter with the pandemic stretched time out more than I stretch out my paychecks. That sunny day broke the pattern of drab: high 60s with little wind; the clouds were starting to become white and puffy rather than the long gray streaks winter gives.

It felt like an event, so I even dressed for the occasion: shorts, a shirt, and some sunscreen. I decided to take advantage of the bright day and go for a run.

By the time I started, the day was fully bright and blue. The air was sweet and the wind purged the discarded leaves and dust that winter had frozen in street corners. People were walking their dogs with sunglasses and iced coffee. The trees swayed when I stepped onto the sidewalk. Everything was moving and alive. 

Despite the sun’s rays and the heightened sense of joy in the air that wafted like perfume, I was feeling gray. Over the year, COVID-19 made me uncertain about my future. In my life, like most people, the pandemic revealed certain aspects of life that weren’t previously apparent. Maybe for some it was relationship issues. Maybe it was cabin fever or job uncertainty.

In my case, my career path was no longer clear. I was increasingly aware of this fact as the days dragged on in isolation. Throw in the economic flux of the job market, a splash of consistent restlessness, and you have a cocktail of underlying anxiety.

Caught in a web of thought and analysis-paralysis, I often spent more time pondering the future than acknowledging the present day. 

It was no different that particular day on my run. Restlessness, uncertainty: these feelings were on repeat lately. Even on the run, I couldn’t shake myself spiraling between what could be and what was.  

But when “Try” by The xx came on shuffle, I was brought back to a different time. My sister and I had listened to this song on repeat when we were in high school. We would listen to it on the car ride to the Charles River—our official, unofficial running spot on hot days. Everyone ran that stretch of river, so there was a silent community in the collective suffering running in still heat provides. We would start on the Cambridge side because that’s where we could park without getting towed, and follow the small loop the Longfellow Bridge and Harvard Bridge provided—a small fraction of the 80 mile stretch the entire river spans from. 

Despite the number of other runners, there was a calmness that was hard to replicate running by the water. I remembered we would listen to the song aloud and the breeze would follow us. The lead singers’ gentle croons hovered over the melodic guitars. The chords plucked, the drums sighed—notes would meander over the lazy heat. We would listen to it passively and willingly be caught in its flow. 

It was a song attached to a time when things were simpler.

We were young and didn’t realize the beauty of ignorance yet. Before college, before moving, before adulthood; before COVID’s disruption and the political fanfare that followed. 

I felt nostalgia for that time. The song was a time capsule for that period of young bliss. A time signified by nothing but potential and wonder. I wanted to hold on to that moment and bask in its familiarity with the sunshine; I thought maybe if I held onto it, I’d feel that same feeling of bliss I did before—stronger, older, wiser, and grayed with time’s passing.  

I realized it wouldn’t happen, though. It dawned on me I didn’t want to recreate that feeling but escape to it, and temporarily leave the brute known as adulthood. So the longer I listened, and the more I tried to replicate that moment in time, it became more apparent it wouldn’t return. Despite the memories the song brought on, the feeling wasn’t there. It was something different entirely. I paused my run to consider what that could mean for me and began slipping into the cycle of overthinking. 

Something funny happened when I paused. I stopped by the bridge’s edge and I saw the light bouncing off the water. I had never noticed how lively the Cambridge side of the river was. I saw MIT’s large dome and considered its presence. I saw people sitting in the grass talking and lounging. This moment all felt new to me, despite the song’s familiarity.

In many ways, I experienced a new moment.

Though I couldn’t replicate exactly how things were back when I was young, I was in a rare spot of the complete present. I realize this phenomenon is equal parts good and bad. While you may never experience the past exactly as it once was, you’ll experience new things as you grow. New moments will replace old ones. You’ll learn new lessons.

Nothing is permanent, including yourself. Like the seasons, you’ll change. Like the flowers in bloom, there will always be new iterations of the current you. 

I guess that’s why I’m starting this series with Windrose. Acknowledging the passing experience of time and memory through these moments in time. The rebirth spring grants gives me this clarity. Rather than lamenting over what was in the past or being paralyzed by the future’s uncertainty, I’m working on staying in the present. 

Admittedly, music helps with this process. Music is unique in that you listen to it not to anticipate its end but appreciate its perpetual moment. It’s a beautiful phenomenon. I look at it as the ideal way to live: a perpetual moment. But I know it’ll take time to get to that point. One day I may not need music at all to be in the present.

At that moment, listening to the gentle fall of the song’s crescendo, I let go of holding on to what was and what could be; I tried to embrace something more manageable: a moment. I embraced the song as a new version of myself. I cast out the old drapery of the pandemic, packed away that moment of time from years ago that this song had surfaced in my memory, and moved forward with a new perspective spring brought me.

[Photo by Sahaj Bedi via Unsplash]

LISTEN:

Try — The XX

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