Golden hour
One of the strangest things we do…
is begin missing the moment before it has even ended.
Maybe our golden days were never golden because they lasted forever.
Maybe they were golden because while we were living them…
we weren’t thinking about losing them.
We weren’t watching the clock.
We weren’t standing beneath the afternoon sun wondering how many hours remained until sunset.
We were simply there.
Completely there.
I found myself in the middle of a celebration recently.
Music.
Laughter.
Friends smiling so hard their eyes disappeared.
For just a moment I stopped listening to the laughter and started wondering…
Will these people still be here ten years from now?
Who will stay?
Who will drift away?
Will this place still feel like home?
Then I caught myself.
I had quietly stepped out of the celebration…
to begin grieving its ending.
An ending that hadn’t happened.
I think we do this more than we realize.
We mourn relationships that are still alive.
We fear doors that are still open.
We brace ourselves for winter…
while we’re still standing in summer.
Maybe that’s why so many of our favorite memories only become golden after they’re gone.
Not because they were better than today.
Because while we were living them…
we weren’t trying to hold onto them.
We simply lived them.
I remember sitting in my car after my high school graduation.
“Wow…
That really happened.”
Then came the question every new season asks.
What now?
I remember sitting alone after my entire religious world fell apart.
Looking at empty walls where certainty used to hang.
What now?
I remember sitting in a coffee shop with almost nothing left.
Thinking I had reached the end.
Only to discover that endings have a strange way of becoming beginnings.
Time has kept teaching me the same lesson.
The sun sets.
And somehow…
it rises again.
Different people.
Different places.
Different joys.
Different versions of ourselves.
Life has never asked me to keep one season forever.
Only to be fully alive while it is here.
Because one day…
this season may become one of the stories that makes your eyes light up.
One of those stories you tell with a smile that arrives before the words do.
“Oh…
Those were such beautiful days.”
So maybe don’t skip ahead.
Don’t rehearse the goodbye while everyone is still dancing.
Don’t mourn tomorrow while today is still reaching for your hand.
Stand in the sunlight while it is warm.
Laugh while the laughter is here.
Love while love is present.
And trust that when this chapter finally closes…
another page has already been waiting patiently beneath it.
All things have their seasons, love.
Even the ones that change us forever.
Especially those.
So for now…
lift your face toward the sun.
This moment has never existed before.
And it never will again