#amcreads

Until December by Ann Luna

    I will always write about December.

   I will always wonder about that specific point time started evaporating so fast – and life became so unfair with its 24 hour/day policy. Whether it was on the sunny days and glimmering summers that rendered my mind dull, or the long melancholy days where days were slow, but were fast growing me out, somewhere along there I saw more of complications of being human. I see that nothing is slow or fast now. Everything just goes and slips by without notice, being aggressively spent and consumed, and being remembered and forgotten again, until December.

   I will always greet this month with a sense of dread. December, the buzzer that always beats you at the end of the game, arriving with a distinct disturbance every time – as if waking you without a care whether you’re in action or slumber. The message is that you’re at the end once again. And the question is whether you’ve done enough.

   I will always meet another year’s close with a million of sentences starting with “And just like that…” And a million of questions if it were all better having gone just like that, or could have been. Though appearing to be merely spectating through life’s daily motions, some people just find themselves lost in deeper thought than usual. For in the sense that something is ending is the discomfort you can’t not think about – an uneasiness in time passing, an agitation you unwillingly displace on your unrealized goals and dreams.

   December, too soon. The thought itself reveals people’s desires to have more time to achieve the things they want, or maybe to savor and enjoy the moment still, or what remains of it. It’s easier to forget than to behold, to be caught up, to be neglectful than to be mindful. It isn’t until the tail-end of the show that we come to our senses, that we remember that we have to remember, and wake up.

   Decembers are the reason we sometimes hesitate toward conclusions. But with that it gives us a reason to look back and rethink where we are, who we are, what we are becoming – an opportunity to stop and ask where time went, lest we forget all about it altogether.

“So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” Psalm 90:12

   Why we find ourselves short of time is because we sometimes forget to number our days – and to number our days right. For always giving me an unwelcome kind of pressure, Decembers leave me often sentimental, sometimes upset. But more often, I am thankful.

   Though Decembers may come under the guise of an ending, in the whole play I know they are rather pleasant intermissions. It’s easy to see them like they’re the cut-off point for our dreams when they’re just the cue for the next act – a farewell, yet a continuation at the same time. In their wake lay a couple of failed expectations, or mistakes that could have been prevented; but in their dawn also lies this furious kind of hope for a future where the best is yet to take place. And in that my soul will always be consoled – life will always be renewed, and many dreams will refuse to die.

   Decembers make the perfect space for hope, and hope will always be something to write about.