What's it all about

 

I have said it before, but I'll repeat it here. This past year of quarantine has aged me much more than one year. I feel old. The emphasis is on the word, feel, because that is what filters the way I experience life.

Feelings.

I say this now because the filter is starting to erode. It actually began a few days ago while I was driving my car. Nothing changed. The sun did not peep out of the clouds. The landscape did not look more beautiful. The story on the radio was not more compelling.

But I felt suddenly moved. For an instant I remembered a different feeling in this same place. As though I had breached a time warp and tasted a slightly happier carefree moment from past.

I have noticed this type of thing several more times since then. Walking into a store, or across the parking lot, even sitting in my apartment when the sun got low enough to burst through my windows and heat up the room with its bright yellow orange rays.

Small glimpses of the Before Times. Times that seemed sadly normal back then, but vaguely euphoric now.

Life! What's it all about? 

I'm starting to remember.

It's more than warm chairs and coziness. More than ordering groceries on line and finding them delivered outside the door. More than good programs over the internet and good books read in bed. 

It is the freedom to be all those things that seemed more like dreams than reality.  It is about reclaiming the joy of living.