I don’t know your story, your pain points, your triggers, or trauma. So while this episode isn’t necessarily heavy, I do mention the concept of death because of a quote that sets the stage for my thoughts. More specifically, this episode discusses the larger concepts of change and transition, and I talk about the times in our lives when we may need to let go of the past and focus on what is ahead of us.“There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.” C.S. Lewis, 1963.
I found this quote while reflecting on some of the fleeting things in my life and I began to search for the quote’s meaning and origin.
Contrary to what I interpreted, Lewis did not write this in the context of mere sadness with moving on or optimism. He originally wrote the passage in a letter to Mary Willis Shelburne, an American poet and correspondent of Lewis.
The C.S. Lewis Institute1 described how the context of the quote surrounds the most grim concern we as humans face: death. He was challenging her fearfulness toward her looming death. While Lewis died months later, Shelburne actually lived for 12 more years.
Life itself is a fleeting thing. To reckon with that truth, some find peace in religion. The Institute’s July 2006 one-page message discussing Lewis’ letter states,
“Yet for the followers of Christ, death need not be the depressing idea that many imagine.”2
The quote speaks to how the world, while often beautiful and grand, should not be a source of regret or despair.
Regardless of whether you are Christian or not, I think we can all take away something from Lewis’ message.
The last two episodes discussed the yearning or longing for something once had whether you had known of that something or not. I wanted to take the space to talk about the concept of fleeting things.
As we move forward in life, we grieve the things associated with our past. Whether or not we’re aware of it. It may not always show up immediately or show up neatly and conventionally, but it often does come out.
It might become apparent when you happen to mention the grade school you went to and your favorite teacher. It might be in how you keep a certain image on your phone’s lock screen. It could be in how some of your conversations lately have started with “remember in 2016,” or even in how you bought that treat at the vending machine because it reminded you of the easier time of snack breaks in kindergarten.
Even while we may still feel nostalgic for some of the things we’ve lost, when we are in new phases of our lives, we do tend to adapt.
It’s a common popular culture reference to visualize the high school senior going off to college. The bittersweet complexity of growing up is, in part, chronicled in the Pixar film Toy Story 3. During this time, we might grieve the schools we used to attend, the old friends we had, the childhood homes where a lot of our memories were made or the carefree, endless summers. It makes sense. To some extent it feels like we’re leaving it all behind - everything we’ve known - for what might be a special experience.
It is an experience loaded with uncertainty. It’s loaded with the grief of adolescence as an adult child-to-adult parent dynamic begins to emerge. Between the gaps there’s a slew of emotions associated with the acknowledgement that things are forever changed.
People are different. The environment around you is different. You, yourself, are different.
It’s hard, but eventually you begin to accept it all. The independence and self-discovery, the fumbles and the wins.
Within every new transition that we face, we lead ourselves in an unfamiliar direction. For each milestone and life change, we might use a coping process - similar to the stages of grief (and maybe even not linearly) - until we reach acceptance.
Some of the things that can be so fleeting for us aren’t as heavy as death. When just about anything changes, we are adapting and transitioning from the old to the new. We are outgrowing beliefs, people and dynamics. Although it might not feel like it in the moment, there are shifts happening all over - starting internally and expanding externally to how we engage with others.
Relationships can often be fleeting things.
We might become distant from a person who we used to know so well, but in time, it seems like they’ve become a stranger. You have a shared history and you still feel like you know that person. However, the person they are now, is not the same as you remember them. It can be hard to reconcile the two versions of the person in your mind. Or maybe it’s that the person you were with them, is not the same person you are now. It can be hard to make sense of that shift too.
Perhaps it’s the dynamic between you and an aging parent and having to navigate the growing anticipatory grief. It might be in recognizing the slowly reversing of roles that can make life feel a little upside-down.
Outside of relationships there are so many fleeting things that we typically refer to as life transitions. They can include moving to a new city or losing a job. Perhaps the kids you used to know are towering over you now.
The feeling of things being fleeting can happen as you move from long-term employment to retirement too. The person you thought you were when you were working 40 hours a week is gone. You may no longer be the same person now that you suddenly have no one to answer to about how you’ve just spent the last eight hours.
While it can sometimes hurt to experience change, it’s necessary for growth. To stay in the same place would do nothing for us. I would even beg to say it makes the inevitable life shifts harder to accept when everything around you is changing and you’ve stayed the same. Rejecting your season of transition impedes your ability to move forward.
It’s like you’re still wearing a winter jacket, a hat and boots when it’s 80 degrees outside, and then wondering why no one else is burning up except you.
I, too, often wish things could stay the way they are sometimes. For someone who values structure and consistency, it can be tough. However, I’ve begun to recognize over the last few years that what was sufficient for me at a certain point in time, may no longer work for me anymore. As I share this all with you, I am still practicing moving forward from what once was. I’m redefining what certain things mean in my life and the place they hold.
So, here’s that Latin word again: desiderium. Recapping from the first episode of this podcast, it means the ardent longing for what once was or something lost. It’s separate from regret, it’s the bittersweet longing for something you had. Desiderium encapsulates a bit of what I describe in this episode.
The longing to be back at your childhood home with every member of your family around the table. The longing to be ten again and racing out to recess with your friends to play freeze tag. Even the longing of being back at your old job with those same coworkers – because who knows where they are now.
It’s almost like nostalgia, but there’s something deeper there. It’s almost like you’re longing for something that is a core memory, something that claimed a part of you, something that made you into who you are. The longing for a point in time, a dynamic or thing that was once magical and you can’t get it back.
What often leaves me pensive is just that. You can’t get any of it back.
But I’m inclined to think that’s the point.
It’s like you’re still wearing your middle school 2-in-1 winter coat during the summer before 9th grade. The one with all the little compartments that you hid the flag in during a game of capture the flag with all your friends, leading to your team’s win. The one with all those little holes and tears in it from the time you accidentally threw it in the washer at high speed.
Okay, sure, you can still fit it. But first, it’s no longer winter. Secondly, it has holes in it. And most of all, it has served its purpose.
So, like C.S. Lewis said: “There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”
