The Passerby

The mind thinks what he does and the heart feels what she feels. They don’t always go together at will. When they are at loggerheads, I feel like a passerby on the sidewalk, watching my life go by at its own pace – sometimes whizzing by, sometimes crawling by. Time is ripped out of its usual sync. The happier moments do their best to live up to the old adage that "times flies when you’re having fun" and the duller moments succeed in dragging their lifespan to the longest, to the misery of all tied to them.

And I, the passerby in my own life, stand at the side, bewildered by the lack of a normal time pattern, is left unsure how to jump into any one frame. So I stand by. And I watch. Nothing that happens to me in those frames of my life happens to me, the passerby. I see the me in those frames crying over regret but I am out of that pain. I see the me in those frames dancing late at night in total abandonment but I don’t feel the joy either.

Until one day, when I don’t expect it, my heart and mind come back together, and all at once, I am grabbed into the frames. Time snaps back into its all purposeful order and resumes its normalcy. 60 seconds make one minute. 60 minutes make one hour. There is nothing faster or shorter than the speed at which the hands on my watch tick.

The passerby has vanished. I am me again.