I’ve just been really feeling this song lately.

Ain’t it beautiful! Especially the lines “Yesterday’s gone and / Tomorrow never comes still I’m / Living like they’re all that I’ve got.” Especially over the last year and a half, I keep returning to this yearning, this constant ache of wanting to go back to the past. Not just before Corona, but years before that. Before college, before adulthood, maybe all the way back to middle school. I have this idea that between the ages of 12 and 16, I lived the perfect life, or at least the perfect life for me. I had a lot of free time back then--though I didn't fully realize it--so after school, my days would be filled with reading, writing, drawing, whatever other artsy thing I was into at the time. Sprinkled in were a couple of social events a month: hanging out at the mall, going to see a movie, a bestie slumber party, or just plain youth group. In reality, I know that’s not even an accurate picture: my schedule was not that straightforward or stress-less most days and that part of my life came with 99 problems, lol, both self-inflicted and completely out of my control. Though there were many wonderful things I had then that I don’t have now, there are many wonderful things I have now that I didn’t have then. It really just depends on what parts I choose to focus on: the simple and the wonder-filled or the stinging pain and worry threaded through both then and now.

Seasons. Neither of them perfect, or even close to it. Just different, each with their own unique beauties, each with their own unique struggles.

To me, “Into the Infinite” is a song that speaks directly to that, to living here, in this season, breathing in this moment, whatever it has to offer. Tomorrow may not be the tomorrow I hoped for, and yesterday, for better or for worse, cannot be regained. Thus, all I can truly lay claim to is right now. And learning to live this moment to its best.

This is hard for me. I always used to know what came after, what I was going to do next. But lately, planning is hard and it’s just been one day at a time, with only more of the same at each crest of the horizon. As many others are, I’m kind of in a limbo stage, due partially to COVID but, for me at least, to many other things as well. You might say that, overall, it’s been an adjustment. ;)

But in other ways, it’s also been very sweet. When I manage to keep my eyes directly forward, my focus on what is here, each day grows long and meaningful. There is so much with which to fill each moment, and it doesn’t have to matter in the long run so long as it matters now. Minor things become marvelous: waking up to see snow coursing down in your slightly southern state; finding my favorite characters’ favorite ice cream at the grocery store and agreeing that it is the greatest dessert under the sun; going for a run in crisp, cold air and feeling the sweet sharpness of it coursing through the body, awakening every cell. These things, for a moment, become all that is, all that matters. Suddenly, right here, where I am, matters. Even if I’m not living in way back when or in whatever comes next.

For me that has been an important lesson to learn: right here. Right now. Still matters and still has something to give.