Slipping Through My Fingers

On Transitory Joy

Regular readers will know that I am approaching retirement, and with a little more time on my hands have been seeking to digitise some of our analogue paper photos from before digital cameras become the norm.

To be honest we were “late adopters” of the digital era, continuing with the use of film longer than most, and probably have more analogue photos than many. It is a task that will take some time!

So to try and store our collection of printed snaps, I have been taking photos of our photos! It brings back many memories, of when our daughters were young, a wonderful phase of our lives. With hindsight perhaps I didn’t appreciate how short and precious those times were.

There were many happy days, so many joyful memories. It is also strange, going through the photos, to see our daughters at that phase of their lives, not knowing what was coming down the track, some good things some bad, the challenges that would face them.

I have always been sentimental, probably overly so, wanting to capture precious moments with the camcorder, to bottle up those memories forever, the school plays, the concerts, sports days, and holidays with grandparents now departed. The process of trying to save the photos brings to mind the Abba hit, about time “Slipping Through My Fingers”:

Ofcourse, I have been through a similar process before, when my parents died, of looking through old photo albums, some of them going back for generations, so far that some of the people in the photos are no longer known.

Albums treasured as if trying to hang onto what has been lost. I wonder if my children will treasure the photos I am digitising as much as I do. There is also the realisation that as the years pass, the people in the photos I am trying to save, will inevitably also pass from memory. Such is life.

Things never stands still, time’s relentless arrow marches ever forwards, waiting for no one. There is one view of the universe that some hold, which is that everything exists in an eternal present, that the perception of passing time is just a feature of human consciousness. Do all events just exist, all still ever-present? With that view, perhaps events and people are not lost forever. Or perhaps people live on so long as there are people who remember them?

As well as bringing back times of great joy, memories are sometimes painful, the realisation that one’s adult children are so different, that they are like completely different people from those children with whom we briefly shared incredibly close bonds. Perhaps it is wrong to be so sentimental, to try and hang on rather than letting go?

There is the Buddhist view that pain comes from attachment to people and to things, that to transcend pain one should avoid such attachment. Yet seeking to avoid and deny that pain, from not having attachment, is in many ways a denial of the human condition. To live is both to suffer, and if we are lucky, to have transitory moments of great joy.

To any new or prospective parents, I would urge you to savour every moment with your young children. Everything is transitory, nothing permanent. Be sure to make the most of every happiness: it is temporary. Just as pain may sometimes be endured with the notion that “this too shall pass”, so sadly the same is true of joy.

As always, thank you for reading.

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