I was driving, rather, going five mph in the fast lane the other day when a song came on that completely moved me to experience a roller coaster of emotion. As soon as I heard the first verse I couldn't help but to smile wide. I turned the volume up all the way because I didn't want to miss a lyric. Then the bridge came and my mood suddenly shifted, my smile faded to a somber stare and I was overcome with an inexplicable sadness. Finally, the chorus arrived and I took a deep breath before I quietly sang along. On one hand, I was so grateful my shuffle chose this particular song, since I hadn't heard it in awhile, but on the other hand, I was almost disappointed it played at all...

You may be wondering why on earth I didn't just skip the damn thing and move on, because I wondered the same thing myself, but it felt like by doing so I would be ignoring the significance that song once held. It was "The Eagles", a true classic (in case you cared to know).

For that four minutes and 10 seconds I was enthralled by the melody, the drums, and the memory it reintroduced. The last time I listened to that song I was sitting passenger, the windows were rolled down, and my hair wouldn't stop dancing with the wind. The sun was blazing overhead and the waves were going absolutely wild. I felt alive.

I was the happiest I had ever been, I kept thinking to myself how lucky I was to be sitting there with you, in an untainted bliss. But, even then I knew this moment would soon fade to a memory. After all, that's all we're left with, just memories of the places we've been with the people we know, or in some cases, used to know.

It was stupidly simple, we were just driving along PCH listening to some random song, looking out at the ocean while we passed it, such a little thing in retrospect. However, the little things are never really that small, in fact, they tend to leave the biggest impression.

As I sat in hell, or traffic, I couldn't help but to remember all of the minuscule details of that day and how at the time, they were too minute to take note of. But memory has a tricky way of salvaging the remnants of what once was in order to occupy our hearts and minds at unsuspecting times.

I have come to realize that memories will always haunt us, even the good ones. They creep up on us just when we thought we had forgotten it all, only to remind us of how we haven't even begun to. They latch onto those little moments we once shared and feed off of them until we acknowledge their parasitic presence. Our memories are the bittersweet reminders of who we used to be, sometimes they remain in conjunction with who we are in the present, but other times they are unrecognizable snapshots.

I've always been told to take caution with whom I build my memories with, because they tend to last a lifetime. I hold my memories close, the ugly and the beautiful alike. Without them, I wouldn't have been able to savor my four minute and 10 second sliver of paradise I had that day. Some memories are simply worth the haunting I guess...