how to not borrow grief from the future
entry #05: how impermanence is life's biggest gift.
the quote i reference in this letter’s title is one i’ve seen spread about & plastered around every social media platform i’m still present on recently. and when a quote is seen more often than perhaps intended (at least in my experience online) it can be easy for the familiarity to wear down the amount of tenderness and meaning present in those few words — it can shave down the corners of a sentence until the whole quote has had all its meaning blurred into nothing.
it’s a careful balance though; how much we see something, and the growing sense of familiarity that comes with that, can be one way for something to “lose meaning.” but this can also be done through overanalysis.
just like how we can overanalyse ourselves for even our most minute details, seeking out ways to compare our own lives to the ones that others are living, we can overanalyse the very quotes that urge us to look at our lives without such analysis. so i want to keep this as non-analytical as someone like me can. but a fatal flaw of mine sometimes is the fact that i do see so much meaning in everything. it can be beautiful to feel so heartfelt, but sometimes it’s hard to relinquish my hold on the urge to wring out all possible perceptions and definitions of the quotes that hit me hardest.
and similarly, this notion of relinquishing and holding onto things with less of a white-knuckle grip, is exactly what this quote encourages. when this quote speaks of not borrowing grief from the future, what it really means is to be where you are right now — you cannot spend your whole life feeling the feelings of your future self, imagining every change that will occur and preparing yourself for it. you cannot live your life honestly and presently from a perspective of preparation.
when we “borrow grief from the future” we are essentially giving up the opportunity to bask in the greatness of what is still here in the present. when i searched on tumblr for posts that included the term above, it was filled with posts depicting a fear of loss — of relationships, pets, experiences etc. and these are all things that, understandably, you would fear the absence of when you are so used to them being part of your mental wallpaper.
we grapple endlessly with the idea of life’s impermanence, its everchanging nature — it scares people. it scares me, too. but you have to be here now if you don’t want to regret the future, you have to appreciate that the fact that everything is temporary is the very thing that makes it meaningful. summer 2022, it was the best summer of my life and my friendship group admittedly looked a lot different to how it does now. i have to live with the fact that it will never be that way again, we will never be there, experiencing that summer again. we can remember, but we cannot recreate it and we cannot go back.
sadly it doesn’t mean i still don’t wish for it all back anyway. give yourself the space to miss things even when you know that their finite nature is what breathed meaning into them.
but do you know what the best part was? when we were living that summer, we weren’t mourning the loss of it prematurely, i didn’t look at my friends and think “this time next year i won’t know you the same way i do now.” all i did was what i wanted to do in that very moment — i loved them and i told them that, i documented who we were in pictures and videos, i let myself be fully present. this is what not borrowing grief from the future means. do not rob yourself of your inherent ability to experience what you have right now. it’s a hard thing to implement, sometimes you won’t even be aware of the fact that you’re mourning something that you’re presently experiencing.
but sometimes, without even having to try, you will feel that feeling of being fully here, not there in the future or there in the past, just here. wherever possible, hold that feeling — but do not try and force it to stay. because yes, it will leave, and so will every other moment. you cannot beg the past to stay, and you shouldn’t. the now can be enough. just once, choose to not look into the future, not even 5 minutes into the future. just look up, and be here. the grief you brace yourself for may still come, but feeling the weight of it it now won’t lighten the burden of the future.
if the idea of the future’s grief still scares you, that’s ok. just know that right now, all you can do is choose to live your life earnestly and with love, so that when any form of loss occurs, you can know that you experienced it while it was here to its fullest extent.
from the warmth,
char ♡
thanks for reading!
this entry’s song recommendation: you are here by james marriott (i’m seeing him live again in just over a week AHHHHH!!!)