We all know the feeling of not being wise enough to appreciate what we have until it is gone.
Passenger knows about it. You “only hate the road when you’re missing home.”
Listening to the lyrics, you know it revolves around a relationship, but the feeling of the lyrics is applicable to every part of life.
Anyone knows the feeling of those last few weeks of school, work or college, when you count the days, stare at the calendar, wishing that you might get the magical strength of moving days around and that you all of a sudden would be on holiday.
I felt that way last year during the end of the study weeks of spring.
The sun had started to peek behind the clouds and Salthill beach was filled with smiling faces and ice cream.
I could not wait to be done with exams and for myself to be free as a bird.
The English tutor sent out an email and I remember it so clearly. It was such great motivation, just what I needed those last few days of work before submitting the final essays.
“Soon the summer months will make it all a happily-fading memory,” he wrote, and it was all true.
The memory of my first year is certainly fading. Though the “happy” part might be interpreted in several ways. As a stressed-out student going 90% on caffeine, 10% sleep, the happy side of it was that it would soon be all over. Afterwards, coming home, sitting in the morning sun, wondering what to make out of the day ahead, I could not help but see a slight bit of melancholy between those lines.
I saw the college days as the ones filled with happiness. I saw the happiness of those days fading away, all becoming part of a beautiful memory in the back of my head. From time to time, I can get mad thinking of how technology moves forward but how no one has yet constructed that time-travelling machine, allowing me to go back in time to those days of Freshman year when it all felt so daunting – no – I mean exciting.
Sometimes I madly urge to have Dr. Emmet Brown by my side, because he knows how to make that dream come true. He would help me to travel back and enjoy the days that swiftly passed by.
I would travel back and tell my younger self to not just snort by a wall decor stating “carpe diem,” but to live by it.
The melancholic realisation is that this is how the world works. Times that may seem tough and challenging in the moment are the times you will look back to, realising how good it was, how good you felt. But do not get me wrong. I know that time is constructed to pass by, it is what makes us move forward and grow.
Though, sometimes it is lovely being able to look back at times long gone, realising that you did nothing but loved every second of the road though you were missing home.