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⬅️ Previous capture (2021-12-03)
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Published on: 2021-08-12
There's been a series of posts floating around here on the topic of last times. dece said it first with:
If there is a first time to something, then there is exactly one last time.
A few geminauts chimed in with their thoughts:
Dying, Every Day, by marginalia
First of, I want to thank you all for your posts. They are really beautifully worded and the sentiments they express resonated with me deeply. dece ended the original post with a question:
Do you also think about last times? Let me know!
and to that I answer: yes, yes I do.
A few weeks ago I was going out with some friends; we were going to watch a movie together. It was soon after my second COVID vaccine kicked in, and I was excited to meet up with people in person. I was also in a bit of a strange mood; it's been a moody year altogether. And so it occurred to me: what if I was going to see this movie for the last time that very night?
We were going to watch Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, my favorite trek movie. I've seen it quite a few times already. Maybe even too many, to the point that it started to lose its magic.
I did not expect anything bad to happen to me that night. I could re-watch the movie later on, any time I wanted. But what if I made a consciences decision not to? What if, through my volition alone, that night was to be the last time I watched this, one of my favorite movies?
Thoughts of this strange feeling cam back to me as I was reading dece's words few days ago. Yes, it is true that for all that we do there will be the last time we do it. But what if we could control one small part of those last times? Would that improve our lives? Would it make us intentionally pay more attention? Enjoy things we love a little bit more, or at least not allow them to lose meaning in repetition?
I don't know how far this idea can be taken. Watching movies would, obviously, work. And as ~ew points out so would traveling. Listening to music, eating a certain food at a certain restaurant, too. There are probably more experiences like that.
There will, in the end, always be those things that we aren't prepared to stop doing. Seeing our loved ones, talking to them, laughing with them. Those too will one day be taken away from us, and there's nothing we can do to prevent those last times. We rarely have control over them. But it might help prepare us for those moment if we confronted other last times: on our own ground, in our own time, for smaller things in life.