image obtained from Pinterest

So, for those who got stuck with philosophy classes, design courses, or art lessons, we all experienced that annoying exercise when a obvious underpaid, probably overfed, and most likely sexually frustrated professor would stand in front of a class and ask one very simple, yet complicated, question.

Who are you?”

There’s always some kid who replies immediately with his own name (Shit, Rick Sanchez would have a field day cursing the sanity out of this boy), not understanding that this mere question serves no other purpose than to create the illusion that the one asking it is smarter than everyone else. In the end, we should be please by knowing we all are unexplainable, unpredictable, unnameable, and a whole lot more adjectives ending in “-able”.

However, one night while sitting in the street curb, among pints and flat-sole shoes, the traditional shitty-bosses & video-game-cheat-codes talk morphed into one of those stories Ed Sheeran would write about during his first album. So, as the stars became more vague, one of us whispered one of the craziest and most beautiful phrases I will ever hear,

“I don’t know who I am, or where I will end up.
But, I carry around a single-second moment, that will be next till the day I die.”

image obtained from Pinterest

Can you imagine the beauty of it?
The knowledge that you can face whatever life throws at you, because inside of your right pocket, next to that new box of cigarettes and old keychain that no longer holds any meaning, there’s a totem — a one-time currency— that reminds you that you can keep moving forward.

We are the sum of every instant, asleep or awake, that we live.
We are the development of every idea, fantasy or reality, that sets our goals.
We are the expression of every emotion, good or bad, that we share with others.
And yet, a single moment, a single second, could tell you more about who we are than an entire biography.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how we face our problems, but where our mind goes to find that strength and wisdom.

image obtained from Pinterest

Yes, of course I thought about writing this one in my personal diary.
Yet, I was too afraid someone might steal it and read it. It’s quite hard to explain why, but that’s how I knew it needed to be public right from the start.

Eventually, I’ve come to realize that I too, have one moment — a single second of my life — that is forever stuck to me. I wasn't surprised to find out which one it was, but it did amaze me to watch how my own essence clung itself to a fleeting instant that I didn’t value as much as I should’ve done back in the past.

Somehow, in time, we manage to see that one second over and over, fulling us with purpose and forcing us off the ground in our saddest moments, like when Glenn from TWD died, or when the show Pushing Daisies was cancelled. We can never neglect the importance of being the only ones holding that totem, because if we lose it, then we might not be able to distinguish one reality from another. And being trapped in Limbo doesn’t hold so many fond memories for the life that comes after this one.

In its own inexplicable way, living in seconds sounds ethereal.
Life accommodates to the disrupting nature of our mind. I can press my lips together, and for a single moment, find myself tasting that NYC coffee I so desperately used to crave on Tuesday nights. I can close my eyes and feel, for an instant, the memory of soft skin against my uneven, rough complexion.

Yes, it might be just for a second, but they are more real than reality.

image obtained from Pinterest

The beginning of that one song during your favorite concert.
A pair of big brown eyes, shining under the moonlight.
That one typed-letter that denied you entry to the university.
The first moment when you hold your newborn daughter.
A innocent smile, waiting on the other side of the door.
Writing the last two lines of your first published novel.
Holding the hand of a love one before their final goodbye.

I keep remembering things that I never thought I would carry along with me. People keep mumbling how we should leave the past behind, but we belong more to it than we do to the future. Our story might be filled with memories we never wanted to lived in the first place, but so does our fondest and most valuable recollections. Seconds, and they disappear, sometimes never to return.

So, I am sorry for your story Ekko, but time does have a funny way of accelerating our lives while extending mere seconds into eternity. Maybe, after all this our sacrifice and effort— in this thing we keep calling life — we will find out that our entire lifespan was worth just one second.

But hey, “Always a dance with you”, am I right?

image obtained from Pinterest[image error]

The Never-Ending Second was originally published in Sex Songs and Gasoline on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.