Morii — the desire to capture a fleeting moment.
It's a time in which you least expected. A time in which that moment spontaneously confronts you, but there is nothing that you can do to preserve it. Perhaps it will always stay as a memory at the back of your mind, but you know that as time passes, cobwebs and dust will cover up that memory and consider the moment forgotten.
You don't want to forget it.
You don't want to leave that moment behind.
Perhaps you can pull out your phone before it completely disappears, hastily clicking on that camera icon and holding it up to that exact time, but you're too late. Perhaps you did take a snapshot, but it comes out blurry nevertheless, unfocusing on the moment you wanted to preserve. It instead gives you a useless picture you know your future self could never decipher.
But, that's the definition of a moment — something that lasts only for seconds or even for a split-second, before it slips through your fingers.
Sometimes I think back to those innocent times in my childhood when grade school was still a year away. I muse about those times in which my siblings and I would run through our apartment, shrieking with laughter as our dad chased us around. When the strums of our dad's guitar would fill up that small room, and we'd dance around in circles with our mom. When at night, my siblings and I would push our mattresses together and start our midnight rants that would end abruptly when our mom silenced us and told us to sleep.
Sometimes I think back to that low dip in my life during middle school when I saw the world through a dark filter. When I quit art classes because I suddenly had no interest in them and spent restless nights pressing my face into a damp pillow. I ruminate on that time when the walls had no color and everyone was just another indifferent person in the sea of faces. When there was always that heavy feeling within me that I couldn't understand.
Sometimes I think back to my freshman year of high school when my eyes flickered rapidly around the hallways, trying to find the D-hall as I pushed my way through the traffic of an intersection. When my schedule was crumbled in between heavy books as I wished I was anywhere but in that pit of chaos. I think back to that student who rolled his eyes at my complete nervous confusion and pointed me in the right direction before muttering "freshman" under his breath.
Although every memory isn't always one I want to relive, I wish I could have captured the essence of each one before it fled. I wish I could have recorded the giggles from my childhood, bottled up the depression from my early youth and saved that relief from my freshman year.
It's a chronic feeling, really — the desire to capture a fleeting moment.
If only I could do just that.
