One day we wake up, and we’re old. We had been getting older, following the same path we always had as it wound its way through the world; but one day each of us sees the end ahead of us, distant though it may be. Does anybody ever figure out where the time went? Has anyone ever found it, wherever it’s hiding itself away?

   Was it behind the couch cushions, where boy kissed girl for the first time, hearts racing and stomachs fluttering? Was it lying at the bottom of the river, the sound of music and laughter muffled by the deep, thick water, young men and women cutting into the depths with their bodies as they fell from above?

   Did it leave with the woman who fled the apartment of the man she thought she loved? Did she steal it? Did he ever notice it was gone, his mind lost in the haze of drink, his sight in that of tears? Did it peek out from under the floorboards where it had been lost, watching as the memory of happier days faded away like any truly spectacular dream always does?

   We look back down that road long traveled, and find it difficult to spot it in its entirety. Sentimentality wins out. Photo albums are pulled out of their dusty tombs, mementos pulled down and examined anew. We remember the people who we met throughout our journey, be they ancient acquaintances or new-found friends.

   We look for them, peering through the trees on either side of other paths that might be nearby. Some are still walking with us, recognize us. We smile and wave, shake hands and remember how far we have come, compare the quality of our respective journeys. Other paths, we can’t find. Some ended long ago, cut short and replaced by gristly underbrush. Some are just too far away, and that’s fine, so long as they’re still walking.

   We close our albums, we lay our memories back to rest again, for the time being. We take a final look back, and take the first new step forward, then the next, and the next after that. We keep walking, taking turns and stumbling along the way; but every once in a while, no matter how soon our trek will end or how far we’ve traveled, we look back, and we remember.

This is your hour, the hour of your blissful silence.

Gone, the ceaseless sounds and tidings of the endless day.

Enter, tranquil time of joy and mourning,

Spell of unwont reflection and blessed ignorance

Breathe in now the calm, live this hour freely,

Before the world reclaims it once more.

We are all broken, but we don’t start out that way.

We enter this world whole, fresh, devoid of any experience or preconception, seeing the world around us for the first time – and that’s the first time we all break. The blank templates of our lives are suddenly filled with color, seeping into every corner as we are fussed over and moved around and made to take in the spontaneous flood of information that just won’t stop, not even for a moment. The color stretches us to our limits, forms cracks in us – thin cobwebs stretching out far and wide, creating fault lines underneath our souls.

We adjust, of course. The never-ending deluge becomes bearable, becomes our definition of normalcy. But now, the cracks have made us vulnerable, and we meet each other, a whole world full of millions upon millions of other people with different cracks, different canvases of fragile glass. Some of those people can shatter us, break off pieces. We might not notice at first, while they’re still there. The pieces can stay lodged in their housing, slipping further and further out until they fall out – until they are taken away by whoever broke it off in the first place. Sometimes they leave unscathed. Other times they leave their own pieces behind, but they never quite seem to fill the holes that need to be filled.

Sometimes we get lucky. We find someone who is broken, too, just like we are, and we fit together perfectly, the jagged edges slotting together like two puzzle pieces waiting to be put together. There might be difficulties, occasionally. Small pieces might chip off as time goes by, but with even more luck, we figure out a way to stick together – even though we might have to snap off pieces of ourselves in the process to fit back together again.

And so we go through our lives, day after day becoming year after year, and we lose more and more pieces of ourselves. Those canvases of our growing ever smaller as we run out of pieces to give away. And we all die, eventually. The canvases of our lives, of our experiences – that first view of the great big world around us, the first kiss at a football game under the stars, the funerals and birthdays of friends and family and strangers, everything that added color and chipped off pieces – they shatter, in the end. No matter how much you managed to hold on to, everything ends. The only thing left is the pieces that others have, the pieces they still hold on to. And every now and again, after more time and more pain and more life, one of those pieces might find another home, and we will be remembered.

And somebody else will be just that tiniest bit whole again.