are you awake? sofia coppola observes in an interview that lost in translation is "about moments in life that are great but don't last. they don't go on, but you always have the memory and they have an effect on you." the hardest thing i've had to learn since college and post-college is that it isn't just the moments that pass you by, it's pretty much everything that ends up passing you by. axioms like "change is inevitable" or "the only constant in life is change" are evidentially true if you've had any experience with reality. so how do you deal with that?

i personally have adopted a "go with the flow" philosophy about change. live in the moment. carpe diem. seize the day. the day is for seizing. the present is the present because it's a present. blah blah cheesy cheesy whizzy whatever. but finding the joy in the moment is a different lesson than learning about how to deal with change. i, for one, get very attached to people and things. not because i'm attached to them being at my side or even attached to anyone specific, but maybe attached to being attached. alternately this could just be fear of being alone, but that's another idea for another time.

i used to hate the idea that great times with people would end, and i used to avoid it if at all possible. stretching out every beautiful moment as long as possible, thinking that each minute could never be duplicated or replaced. but i've learned that although moments might not ever be duplicated, it's also not a do or die situation. sometimes you just have to let things go.

but the thing is, i think i'm sentimental. i most certainly am. i keep (or used to keep) mementos of everything. little snippets of the past always made her way into a drawer or a box somewhere. of late i've had to give up the habit, because once you start moving a lot you start to think of sentimental possessions as another fifty pound box to transport, so you start tossing stuff for sheer spacial reasons. but you keep that sentimental attachment in your mind, and that is harder to clear out. especially when it comes to people.

watching people go is always about wondering "when will i see them again?" goodbyes used to be synonymous with sadness, but as i slowly grew to realize that i'd probably see most people again, sooner rather than later, i dealt with goodbyes much easier. airplanes, cellphones, email and aim have saved my life, thank you. but along with this comfortability in the transience of life, a new emotion surfaced: apathy. people come and go so rapidly that you hardly have time to think about things long enough to realize that you miss a particular person or group of people. once you are used to being unattached, is it exponentially harder to get re-attached? sometimes. definitely. for sure.

missing starts to become a passive activity, where it once was an active one. missing starts to rise and fall with the moments when you actually are about to see someone, or directly after they're gone. now you see them, now you don't. out of sight, out of mind. but we have to do it this way, our individual lives are too busy to hold onto everything at once, even if holding nothing is the only other option. i've had some friends say that they don't "miss people" and they share this fact in a tone of voice that suggests that it's a "bad" thing. but really, i think it's the way that most of us have to operate. no, that's too general. it's probably just the way that i and a few others like me operate. the rest of the world misses.