The Places We Leave Ourselves

The places where we leave ourselves are actually quite significant.

Although it may sound a bit complex, I tend to think of it this way: "Every moment gives birth to a child." Every moment gives birth to a child, and they all belong to us—they are all yours, they are all mine. The only difference is that each belongs to a different moment in time, yet ultimately, they are all a part of us. Everyone possesses a clan of their own, made up of the children of their moments. There are two possibilities: either they remain within reach, right at our fingertips, or they are forgotten in some distant, remote corner—archived, yet untouched. Or perhaps they are lost in such an abyss of obscurity that we cannot even mark their resting place.

There are so many children, yet so little control over the scene.

At times, we leave them behind—when we lack the strength to carry them with us. That childhood memory that resurfaces and leaves you feeling heavy—that was the moment you left that child behind, right there, at the scene. You left a piece of your mind with them, to stand guard in your absence.

Some of these moment-children passed away without ever truly living—without anyone, even ourselves, bearing witness to their existence.

A rare few, the lucky ones, remained as they should—forever children, pure in their joy, genuine, and untainted.

Do not misunderstand me—I am not accusing anyone of failing to care for their children. On the contrary, I blame us all for the belated attempts to reclaim them. For grieving over the loss of a child from an old moment while neglecting the one being born in the present. For the cycles of suffering this creates. For burdening existence itself. For the countless wounds inflicted upon the soul.

We must reconcile with the children born of new moments, and as for the ones left behind, we must accept this truth: "We are too late." We are too late to care for them, too late to claim them, too late to rewrite their fate. We must learn to leave them in their time, to bid them farewell—we are, in fact, obligated to do so. We cannot act for both them and ourselves at the same time, for we are now in entirely different moments. We must accept this and, for the sake of those lost, take better care of the children of the present. We owe this to them—to the ones who were left behind.

We must acknowledge that blaming ourselves for failing to protect the child we once were, in the moment they needed us most, leads nowhere. Moving forward requires taking steps. The more steps we take, the further we go. That is why we must be mindful of where we leave ourselves—the moments where we stagnate, the places where we embrace inertia. We must reclaim our minds from the places where we have left pieces of ourselves. We must care for each moment’s child in its own time—nurture them without becoming bound to them—and continue walking our path.

We must be mindful of where we leave ourselves.