Sundry Wonders: All This Will Pass

Shredding an old life

Friday night, after I shut down my work computer for the last time in 2021, I finally finished shredding some old documents I unearthed and no longer need, mementos of a trying time.

As I passed one document after the other through my little compact shredder, while watching the first episodes of Station Eleven, I thought about how in the time since the one those documents recorded, my cells have entirely renewed.

We grow, we change, we shed our old selves. Trying times do not last forever, nor do good ones. All this will pass, as the saying goes.

All this will pass

I’m a different person now, the world is a different place, and nothing ever stays as it was. I brought the tatters of my old self down to the recycling and tossed them in a bin, doing a little twirl.

Someday this time, too, will pass into memory. We will shed our masks, toss them in a bin, and skip with joy in the sun. We’ll be different people, in another time.

Until then.