Missing Links

As far as I can remember, I loved snow.  All of the activities and fun games associated with cold winters brought joy to me.  I recall waking up to the first snow of the season with wide grin on my face and exhilarating feeling of happiness when I glanced onto white covering spread out on the streets and trees.  The bliss that followed would last the entire season.  Playing in the snow, sledding, building snowmen and bunkers or simply walking on the white surface brought positive, resonating sentiments.  Then when the thawing occurred, a different kind of excitement emerged with first warm sunny rays and early chirping sounds of birds bringing the coziness of warmer days.  Little things mattered, seasons counted and eagerness spread accompanied with exultation. 

Years passed by and every new one carried less and less enjoyment about the seasonal transformations.  Lately, it has been snowing quite frequently but the old feelings did not come to the surface at all.  Snow became a hassle, heat nuisance and only in cool spring and autumn blips of satisfaction protrude, only occasionally and too subtly.  Maybe, I just got used to changes or I failed to pay attention to the metamorphosis.  Or perhaps, something died inside unable to produce childish ardor for simple things in life. 

I often wonder where did I disappear?  The walls that I surround myself with became impenetrable and too sturdy to bring down with an ease of earlier days.  Nothing feels the same; nothing looks the same.  Perhaps, I became jaded by the years of struggles and unfulfilled dreams driven only by the pure survival.  Missing links in my existence seem too many to mention but when I was a child I did not have as many understandings and knowledge to rationalize everything around me.  I guess this is a period when I realize that I am an adult and nothing will seem as exciting or groundbreaking as it used to.  It makes me rather sad to think that way because never again will I have the same outlook on the snow, or sun, or sea, or anything else.  I have loved and I have been loved; I have succeeded and have failed, I have experienced, well I simply have lived a number of years that started to add up, yet not to amount to anything tangible or worth mentioning.  And I know I am not alone.  I do not know a single person who has accomplished what they wanted to and most of the people settled and have mistaken the circumstances for opportunities.  Now, we all struggle through years searching for lost enjoyments, hanging tightly hoping for the former highs that life somehow adorned us with.  Perhaps, I am a pessimist and rationalist with quiet hopes for storms that would awaken old, jovial purity of happiness.  We look for it in other people, in hobbies, in careers, in simple things but for me the end is nowhere near the accomplishment of my ultimate high.  Perhaps, I have a lot of things to look forward to and I have only entered a different sphere of existence where I feel less and think more.  No one ever told me that life quiets down so abruptly and resolutely into the quiescence of existence.  Those minimal islands of hope are the last lingering emotions that I have left in me secretly waiting for the winds to carry me into new horizons devoid of redundancy.