I think a lot about temporary—less as a word, more as a feeling. In some ways—like with heartbreak, sadness, or destruction—temporary is a relief. It’ll pass. Things will get better. We love temporary in moments like this. But when we talk about joy and delight: the best friend reunions that turn into midnight laughing on the kitchen floor, the meals so good your eyes roll back into your head and you moan in indulgence, the drives anywhere with the radio too loud. Temporary seems so unfairly short.
So limited.
So finite.
So borrowed.
It’s been over a year since we moved to Romania and left Mexico, a temporary home we lived for 8 years. It’s been 25 years since 9/11. Heck, I’ve been with Husband almost 20 years. That alone feels like a wild lifetime ago. Where did the time go?
After months away from my parents, I feel how fleeting the years are. But I see it most clearly when I look at my kids. It feels like I went to sleep one night and woke up a mother. I blinked, and suddenly their little bodies are bigger than mine. Forget carrying them up to bed anymore (it’s back-breaking, BTW). Now they’re teens with their own interests, their own personalities. I watch moms with toddlers and remember that mine were pocket-size too. Almost a decade and a half in, and I still wonder—where did the time go?
The best answer I’ve come up with is in the days. There’s the quote “the days are long, but the years are short” and yes, exactly that! 100% that. It seems glaringly obvious, and yet we waste so many days. Our 24 hours are temporary and short so we pack them with small insignificances: doing laundry, shopping for groceries, changing bed sheets, sending text messages. We wait for big milestones to give us permission to celebrate and to make meaning. But when we realize that the days add up to a string of years and those years become decades, it becomes quite clear that each singular day isn’t so insignificant.
If the value of our life is measured in the fullness of our days, why are we packing them full of errands?
I know, I know. It’s not like we can ignore laundry or groceries—even though sometimes we want to. The mundane has to be lived too. I’m not advocating avoidance or living in a mountain of clothes and dishes, but we can balance the to-dos with the living of it all. Make room for it. Carve out pieces of our day to purposefully be alive and notice our life with intention. Plan the midweek best friend dates or family movie nights. Prioritize the creative mediums that fill your cup. Find moan-worthy new recipes and cook with whimsy instead of throwing the same food in a pan and scrolling our phones while the garlic browns.
Ultimately, those are the moments we wish we could stuff in a box or collect in a book and take them out to live over again, exactly as they happened. Because here’s the part to remember: we are the ones creating those moments. So don’t we owe it to ourselves to make the most of now, temporary as it is? Life only knows how to move. It doesn’t stand still. And that’s exactly why these moments matter: because they pass. Because they won’t happen again, not exactly like this, not with these people. That’s what makes temporary both brutal and beautifully unforgettable.
I decided to start a new informal series called “Just Post It”. I opened my drafts folder and realized I had almost 200 drafts just sitting there. Drafts I started and didn’t finish. Why? Likely something to do with perfectionism which I’ll sort out when I have a therapist one day but for now I’m just finishing and posting them.
This post was first drafted on 8/20/2021. Published Sept 24, 2026.
