Transitory

Life, love, relationships. All are transitory. Some come and go. Some stay for the duration. In the end though... we all of us must make that last walk... alone.

We are born alone. 
To die alone. 
But along the way, I pass you by. 
   Greetings fellow traveler.

Transitory. 
All that exists in life is transitory. 
Permanence is but an illusion.
Created from a desire to hold that which cannot be held. 

We behold. 
We love. 
Then, we desire to hold, to have, to possess, to keep unto ourselves. 

We wish to possess the love we feel.
Those we feel it for.
The essence of the nature of those we love.

As if we wish for life to ever stay within  this same moment. 
Feeling exactly like this.

It does not.
It cannot.

To possess another - it is as to grasp at the ether. 
Our external selves are not eternal. 
Our encasements are sentient, temporal and entirely temporary.
We have a shelf life.
    One which eventually comes to pass. 
Then, we must be returned for recycle.


We cannot own one another.  Nor should we. 
And yet we try.

All that we esteem we seek to possess.

Even that which defies definition we seek to own. 
The love, esteem, honor we see in or we bestow upon one another. 
We expect that these things are permanent conditions, 
    ... and that somehow, they should be partly ours because they were
          shared with us. 
We seek to demand them.  To require that they be maintained. 
And when they are lost to others, we mourn our own loss.  

Love is didactic, 
Fleeting, 
Floating. 

If we are lucky it visits us often. 
But also, it must take it’s leave. 
      Move on. 
As life and also as we continue to evolve... so must love. 

Author's Note

Thoughts on life, love, relationships. All of them. Not just the one.

Reviews

[bob, small b. aka invs]

this is beautifully expressed and i couldn't disagree with you more. though in practice and by experience, there is more supporting your position than mine, i HAVE to believe in the permanence of some things. love being among them. i don't think i've ever stopped loving anyone i ever loved. i've never deliberately ended a relationship with anyone i cared about. that doesn't mean ties haven't been severed. there are very few relationships that survive lifetimes. things get in the way. so in that way, you're right. things and people are transitory. but it's also possible that, in believing that, it makes it so. perhaps we today are commitment challenged. if we went into relationships looking at them as open ended rather than finite, perhaps they would last longer. sorry for the rambling. this is something i've been thinking a lot about lately. missing lost friends and wondering why.

[Chris]

I see your point of view as well bob and understand (through my own thoughts) your thinking a fair bit of missing friends and whys. Its kind of unique the way a thought brings out our own tangents.

[Shelley Holt-Lowrey]

I agree and I disagree with you. I think about my mother whom I lost in life, and my son who if very much vibrant and alive. Those are both cases of love eternal. Perhaps it is romantic or non familial love I speak to here. I think about those I have loved and who have gone left and I right at the fork in the road. The love exists eternally in what it was... but I find sometimes - most often, it fades away leaving only a memory of what it once was. Never as strong. Never as consuming. Just a kind memory that fades into a faded sepia hued photograph to be filed into my heart's memory. Always know I have loved and been changed by it, but I tend to leave that love at the fork and carry forward only photograph. I find it fits much better in the baggage that I tend to carry with me.

[Chris]

so real... so very, very real. Even when you realize this - it still has a power - to hurt, to leave you feeling helpless and lost, ...to even have that half-broken smile as you gaze into distances no one else can see.

[Shelley Holt-Lowrey]

Thank you for seeing me once more. And for the correction. Fixed. Big thanks for that. Dislike typos and I must now fire my proofreader. Once I hire one I will get on that!

[EMF]

When you write comic work, you kick bottom (he say's keeping it clean). When you write seriously you prod the bottom so hard a leg appears in each ear (Still keeping it clean you notice). And yeah. Some relationships are passing. Even family ones. But (the rest of this review did turn out to alternate between lots of swearies and smut. The general just of it was though that it is one intercoursingly beautiful and terrific piece of work)

[Shelley Holt-Lowrey]

Thank you for keeping it clean. I now have more teens than ... well a high school that is overrun with teens....on my list. So thanks. And thank you for the review... the kindness and most importantly, thank you for your friendship!

[Ufi Auttorri ~ Amy C. T..]

Absolutely beautiful, Shelley! I totally agree with everything you've said here, so eloquently too. Long ago a similar thought occurred to me, "That which we would love, we must not possess." It was a painful truth but one that has held its integrity over the decades; at least for me. It seems you may have had similar insights as evidenced in this great piece. Thank you so much for sharing.

Ufi (The Count)

[Shelley Holt-Lowrey]

One two three.... thank you so much for your comments and for putting them in such a nice order of thought. And also... thank you for the Count. Ah Ah Ah!

[Marie]

Unfortunately you are right. All relationships are transitory (except for those souls who find each other and become one, and I won't go into that right now). We do not possess. We rent.

[Shelley Holt-Lowrey]

Marie,
We seem to be sharing the same inner-cynic. I dig my inner cynic. She is thoughtful and smart. Just like yours. Life teaches. We must listen and learn. Not all is good. Not all is bad. But everything truly "is". What good do we do if we pass by and only pay attention to the happy stuff. The learning takes place during the painful moments too. We cannot just pass that by and not learn... else why bother.

[Marie]

I do think happiness teaches more than sadness. But sadness usually follows happiness. We need the contrast.