Capturing A Moment

I was writing (or, rather, attempting to write) a piece of music this evening. Don't get excited or anything, it isn't showing up here. But it got me thinking (as I tend to do at any and all inappropriate moments) about exactly what I was trying to do.

You see, I had a feeling. It was a feeling I was trying to itemize and pin down with dozens of tiny noteheads on a piece of staff paper. It was the feeling of a moment. The memory of a moment, really. And I was trying to capture it. And as I shifted from chord to chord piecing notes together, I realized that somehow, the moment wasn't there.

How the hell do you capture a moment?

Is it in the photograph of a happy smiling couple? Is it in a sonnet, strung out in clever rhymes? Is it in a song with a soft, wandering piano solo? Is it in a book, pressed like a flower between the pages? Is it in a diary, hidden away with all the other secrets?

I am always trying in vain to hang onto moments of my life that matter to me, but as I look back through the photos and the poems and the writing, the feeling behind it just isn't there anymore.

It finally struck me that nearly all of the most important and most meaningful moments of my life were never captured in any sort of song, or photograph, or diary. The memories I cling to the most exist only in my mind. It's the memories that I conjure up that still make my heart swell, or make me laugh or cry. I can play the moments back in my head exactly as they happened, if only as shadows of what they once were. But they're fleeting.

I wish that I could pull snapshots from my memories, or write down the soundtrack I hear playing in my head in these moments. I wish that I could find words that adequately describe the feelings of those moments in all their complicated, but delightful glory.

But I can't.

And maybe I'm not supposed to. Maybe I'm supposed to cherish those moments, not immortalize them. Maybe I'm supposed to live in those moments when they come. Maybe if I focus too much on trying to capture the moment, I'm actually missing it.

Do you have a moment you wish you could recreate? Do you have a memory you wish you could immortalize?

~Jessica

Standing Up For Myself

I wrote a while back about how I am constantly doing things for others, and not myself. And as anyone who has read my blog for a while knows, I am not overly quick at learning from my mistakes.

I constantly find myself begging the universe for second chances. And honestly, I feel like I am generally given more than I deserve. And something that I have learned from that is that, to miss an opportunity once is human. To miss it again is just STUPID.

So here I sit, after what probably could count as chance number three at a given situation terrifically bitter that I have once more missed out.

Why would I do such a thing, you ask? It seems as though it would be quite complicated to explain, but it really isn't. The situation was one that everyone in my life has an extremely tough and thorough opinion about just in general, if not speaking specifically of this particular thing. And after months, and even years of letting the weight of their opinions bear down on me, I finally gave in to it. I gave in to what everyone else thought I should do, and how everyone else thought I should behave.

Let's be perfectly clear. I didn't do something I wanted to because I was afraid of what everyone would say if they knew.

Stupid, right? But we've all done it, haven't we?

I'm so angry at myself now, because all I can think about is what could have been, and what I had wanted it, and how scared I'd been of everyone else's opinion and how much I cared about what other people thought of me. Why in god's name should that have mattered AT ALL!? I hesitated when I should have stepped up and gone for what I wanted. And I did it because, as usual, I stopped thinking about what I wanted and started thinking about what everyone else wanted.

So I missed out on something I wanted, because I "didn't" want it, and I "wasn't supposed to" want it. But you know something?
THIS IS YOUR LIFE

You don't get a rebate when you mess up, and you don't always get a second chance when you don't take it the first time. So you'd better do it right the first time, because we never know what's going to happen next.

So from now on, I'm standing up for myself. I'm not letting what other people think of me keep me from going after what I want. I'm not letting anyone else's idea of who I should be keep me down.

Is there anything you wish you could have a second chance at? Is there an opportunity you're really glad you took? Have you ever not done something because you were afraid of what people would say about you? Have you ever done something in spite of the fact that everyone told you not to? What happened?

~Jessica