As in nature
a single flash of lightning illumines everything,
so […] do the impressions of some people.
—The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad - Chapter 2, Section 3, Verse 6
Last night was one of the most intense lightning storms I’ve ever witnessed, the kind of storm where the night was often lit up like day. At one point, it seemed there were more flashes of lightning in the sky than there were moments without.
For some strange reason, in the midst of all this, my friend’s dad popped into my mind. I haven’t seen him in years. I haven’t talked to him in years. I haven’t thought much about him in years. There was a point in adolescence when he was one of the more prominent father figures in my life. I spent a lot of time around him, growing up in my friend’s house, and looked up to him as a role model. Unfortunately, due to circumstances, he had to move back to his home country, and I never saw him again.
This storm appeared to be a metaphorical reminder that some people, no matter how prevalent in your life at one time, can disappear in a flash, never to be seen again. I was too young to recognize the fleeting presence of people around me then, but the older I get, the more aware I become of how little time we have left with the people around us.
Recently, I attended a wedding and reunited with a group of people who were my best friends in college. I realized I haven’t seen any of them in six or eight years—people I lived with, people I saw on a daily basis, people who are now closer to distant memories. Just like that rare kind of lightning storm, my remaining experiences with these college pals will be few and far between, if there are any left at all.
If you live a flight away from your friends and family, as I do, the number of times you visit even your closest kin is once or twice per year. The remaining opportunities to see them could be counted on your fingers and toes in some cases.
These facts are sobering notions when you weigh them in your mind. Like a passing storm, the opportunities will soon have gone by, leaving you only with the vague memories of what went down—a distant, echoing rumble in the background.