An open love letter

By 14:55 ,


It’s hard to say goodbye, it’s hard to let go, it’s hard to leave everything you know.

You know who you are,

Let’s not think about tomorrow. Let’s just focus on today. The future has always been a gamble so let’s strip away all the doubt and all the fear and adopt a rather clinical approach, steeped in logic when we look at our future.  We have the benefit of sharing a long and winding past, where each tomorrow was saturated in uncertainty. The sum of all those ‘tomorrows' that first arrived as ‘todays’ and then almost effortlessly became our ‘yesterdays’, wove the tapestry of our past. The beauty of hindsight is revealed in the simple fact that we survived the anxiety and uncertainty of those ‘tomorrows’ together. We bravely took control as they morphed into ‘today’ and felt a sense of collective achievement as we looked back on all our ‘yesterdays’. The fact is that we survived them all, side by side, they best way we knew how.

For someone who is instinctively wired to be responsive and proactive, blessed with innate foresight, I find it quite ironic that you were the one to gift me with the lesson of being wholly present in every lapsing moment. You opened my eyes to so many things:

The Kiss
  • You showed me not to view time as a mortal enemy; one which runs on the currency of anxiety and seems impossible to control.
  • You taught me not to devalue the current moment by focusing too intently on a future, corrupt with elaborate scenarios. Wasting energy on hypothetical situations when I could instead invest that same energy into appreciating the now – relishing in the abandon of the moment.
  • You showed me that I had a choice. I could choose to view the relentless pace of the clock’s hands differently. You taught me that it’s okay to take a seemingly illogical approach to the passing of time and militantly proclaim that I’m not running out of time and that our time does not have to be dictated by mechanical gears and brass cogs or the faint sound of seconds ticking by.
  • You taught me that it’s too easy to be lured into an apathetic state where the alluring guise of a countdown appears too easy to accept when in reality, all it really is, is defeatist resignation. That by counting down the days, not only was I displacing my responsibility but that I was also releasing what control I had over the situation at hand.


Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “We acquire the strength we overcome.” On the laurels of this quote alone, you should take comfort that we've beaten the odds and succeeded – we have years filled with memories as a testament to this. So in the same way that you gave me the gift of appreciating the present, I want to remind you of the lesson you taught me. 

It’s not about running out of time or feeling like we have all the time in the world – it’s about making the most of the time we have. I’ll even be as bold as saying that we should pretend that time doesn’t exist. Because if we remove the concept of time and it’s hold over our lives, if we don’t allow ourselves to get trapped between those twelve foreboding numerals, all we are left with are moments. Moments in themselves are devoid of expectations, wants and needs. By their very nature they are honest, advertising nothing more or less than what they have to offer. 

So remember that this is where we exist; this is where we dominate – in this very moment.

I love you eternally, (the irony of this statement is not lost on me given the context)

Your Wife

You Might Also Like

1 comments

  1. Just exactly what is the “good” to which we aspire through doing and eating things that are supposed to be good for us? This question is strictly taboo, for if it were seriously investigated the whole economy and social order would fall apart and have to be reorganized. It would be like the donkey finding out that the carrot dangled before him, to make him run, is hitched by a stick to his own collar. For the good to which we aspire exists only and always in the future. Because we cannot relate to the sensuous and material present we are most happy when good things are expected to happen, not when they are happening. We get such a kick out of looking forward to pleasures and rushing ahead to meet them that we can’t slow down enough to enjoy them when they come. We are therefore a civilization which suffers from chronic disappointment — a formidable swarm of spoiled children smashing their toys. - Alan Watts

    ReplyDelete