That morning when I woke up, I found her lying next to me, naked, with her feet on the pillow, reading my favourite book, “The Count of Monte Cristo.” I took a moment to discern if the sight in front of me is a dream or reality and then smiled at myself when satisfied of her actual physical presence in my home and my bed.
I told myself with a strange conviction that this is the moment that my entire life until now has led me to. All the pain, the unbearable agony, and the timeless despair that I’ve been through had been a rough path, a difficult terrain leading me to the peak of human bliss.
I did not think that the beauty of that moment lay solely in the present but also in everything of the past that made it possible.
My past, or more accurately the entire sum of existence before now had been precursors to this moment, and I wasn’t going to take that knowledge lightly. I was going to dedicate my future for the preservation of the memory of this moment. A dark part of me was even ready to stake the future of the entire universe for this selfish need of mine.
I wouldn’t consider it too selfish though. I thought to have deserved this little slice of tranquil beauty and the right to call it my own. I needed it sorely of course, and could not let it slip away.
I knew all too well that I can only experience my life as a linear timeline. But I had a plan, a plan to defy time itself. It was nothing too glorious though.
Here’s what I thought. I thought I would treasure this moment, cling to it in every way possible, and when the time came, I would experience it again and bask in all its beauty and sublimity.
If I die of old age, drowning in a sea, falling from a cliff or getting my body torn apart into thousands of pieces. Either this afternoon or several decades from now, whenever I die, I would expend my last breath in conjuring the memory of this moment, and it will be the last thing that will ever touch my consciousness.
And then there will be no past, present, before or after. Just this moment.