This

Our heart skips a beat. We smile. We cry. Are we afraid? Will we leap into the unknown? We love. We love our hearts out. We are sad. Loss happens and will happen.

We know we are. We don't know a before. Is there an after? In what way? For some, there is faith in what will be. For others, it simply ends.

This. This is life. This is who we are. This is what makes us Us.

You don't know that you are born, in person, yourself. There is no memory. You are told. It's recorded. Irrefutable. You just accept it. A child takes a first step. A milestone. Tradition. But what is time? A minute goes by and we are a minute older and a minute closer. But time is infinite. There is no way to divide into the smallest unit. A moment is an instant, and that instant is already the next instant given that there is no discrete division possible.

While life has a beginning and an end in the form we have come to understand and accept, everything in between is a play on time. Our memory tells us there is time as we think of things past. Some seem eons ago. Some are faint and out of focus. Some, instead, have the clarity of just being yesterday.

A child is all about being aware physically. Are we cold? Are we hungry? Does something ail us? Can we feel being defenseless? We sense warmth or being left. We learn by copying. We quickly learn expressions from adults to tell us what is good or bad, right or wrong, but we can also sense when they don't care. Joy and hurt are a constant roller coaster ride in a day.

Grow, grow, is all we hear and feel. We are restless. We run and run. We don't know or understand being out of breath. We just know to stop when we can't anymore, but only for a few seconds, then we continue without another thought.

Death is far from our minds, but it does make its appearance. We just don't understand its implications when we are just children. We may hear strange words like stroke or heart attack, and all we get is that it means someone dies. Sometimes it seems to be part of a taboo.

A child grows, and once we are able to talk, school becomes the overwhelming part of our lives. So now it is a race to become an adult as quickly as possible. Like getting to the promised land? It just doesn't let up. Eighteen is a milestone, but in an instant, we want to finish school to work. Work because they say that's how the world turns. And turn it does. Quickly at times, slowly at others. Sometimes it jerks, and sometimes it spins. It's like a rollercoaster in a different dimension. For some, having a family and settling down is part of the picture painted of what our time in life should be.

From the first memory as a child, we experience, or rather that we live, we love in a multitude of ways. Sometimes it's like lightning strikes. More often, it starts as a like and blossoms into love. I guess it's fair to say that love takes at least two. Sometimes the oddest one is when there is an inanimate object incapable of being alive and human, but out of our love, we give it purpose, we give it a sort of life, and many times it becomes art. Sometimes we love, and love, but there isn't the faintest of recognition. Is it because we are incapable of loving or there's simply no love.

This. Is this what makes us so unique? Why? Are we the only beings to ask this question? They say Homo Sapiens as a species have been around for 300,000 years, and in terms of time, that is unfathomable for us. That Earth is 20,000 times older is even more incomprehensible, and so the universe is truly infinite, as nothing by human measure can describe what time represents on such a scale.

Complex. Worthy of infinite reflection. So simply consider that this is just us. If it is just us, then life as we understand is meant to be and is truly a gift for whatever reason or chance. This life grows when there is love and passion. Anything else brings nothing else. And if there is only a beginning and an end, live life to the fullest. Don't love because there is a reward; love because anything else is meaningless. Be angry and sad because only then is love clear. Don't let it become a grudge or a pitiless pain that leads nowhere.

We are not alone among ourselves if we live life for what it can be with others instead of pursuing a consuming race. Just enjoy every single instant, the moment that moves seamlessly forward. Ride the rollercoaster and don't get off.

A future. The paradox of time again. Who knows what it will bring, but our very actions put things in motion. Is making discoveries unique to us? One day, at some point, we will understand that chance doesn't exist. We say chance because we do not know beforehand. If we can see and understand how every single atom moves in time, do we then see into the future? The realm of uncertainty or probability. What shall we discover?

Maybe Time and Infinity are two sides of the same coin. If we extend our existence infinitely, we are eternal, and so maybe the universe is indeed ours for us to grow with. Still, would any of it make any sense if we did not know how to love?

Time is always somewhere in our minds. A child feels only life; there's no connection to time. Later, at some point, life becomes a measure of time, and it is not endless. If it is not endless, why are we in such a rush to do the next thing in the next moment, coming ever closer to whatever the end is? Why can't we simply enjoy the moment we are in? It is never stationary anyway. We work. We are told we must learn. We must reinvent ourselves. We must perform. We live with a paradigm. Many forget that our life is only ours, and any choice is ours, no one else's.

Of the many things we have invented, photography's impact cannot be understated. It complements the story of our life. We must remember, though, that what is captured is not exactly what we saw, if it were there. Indeed, it merely reflects our own limitations in an infinite universe. Life as humans is a bewildering oddity. We exist physically in an extremely narrow set of conditions, and truthfully it is only a minuscule aspect of what the universe offers. We do not hear all the possible frequencies. We only see the wavelengths our eyes are capable of. We breathe in a very limited temperature range. We have no real understanding of what could be the coldest of cold or the hottest of hot. At least a photograph captures what we perceive as a moment in time. Then came motion pictures or videos, but it isn't necessarily an invention like photography. A video is not a capture of time; it is just a set of snapshots with the semblance of time. It is discrete, and there are gaps that are lost forever.

When life is like a tank of gas, we start when it is full, but we have no idea how full it is or how far we can go. When we start, we are not concerned; it's essentially a full tank. Along the way, we feel the tank is half full, and the feeling may remain for a while, and then we feel it is half full, and oddly we seem to consume more and faster.

A bundle of joy arrives and everything changes, whether we know it or not. A new life starts and it is forever tied to another life. To nurture a life is to love a life. Then we understand the circle and the cycle of life. We learn to walk. We run. We learn. We want to experience. We rebel. We don't listen to parents and adults. The bundle of joy brings responsibility, and we can only smile when it learns to walk, to run, and then doesn't listen to us.

Why fight? Why be on a warpath? To right a wrong? Why can't we just be alone in what we believe in? Why must we want everyone else to be like us? We fight. We kill. We think we make gains. Time has a different idea. Change is inevitable as we progress, and from afar, things move in cycles. What is a gain today is a loss tomorrow. What is lost today is reborn tomorrow; we just don't know how time will be measured.

Our life is frail as the tank nears empty. It is frail because a mere simple change in our body always has consequences for the ultimate delicate balance. Time becomes memories as we recall the good moments, the challenges, the sad things, and we have regrets if there were moments we should have loved unconditionally but did not. Or maybe we simply thought to wait another day, but who knew that it would never happen.

If we have done the right things as well as done things right, family and warmth surround us. Will we fear what comes next? To say no is probably being untruthful. Time is strange. It takes us forever to do things. We can't run. Maybe not even walk briskly. We rest often. Reflex movements are painful. It seems like ages before we remember a name or a face.

Still, life, seen from our mind, seems full. We desire. We remember. We know what love means. Maybe we can't talk. Maybe it seems a mess, but we are there, prisoners in our own selves. With luck, we are active and learning new things. We draw. We paint. We play a musical instrument. We write.

Life. This wonderful gift. It is there for us to grow and nurture other lives as well. All that makes us unique in the universe we know is for us to smile.

Our life is ours, each one of us.