One of the greatest things about being alive is experiencing those brief, blissful moments when I can forget.

I find that this happens sometimes on days when the weather is just right - when the air is the exact temperature as my skin and envelops me in a gentle, faintly sad sense of nostalgia, like I've been here before, like I'm from here but I know I can't stay. I can’t tell where my body ends and the world around me begins, and it hugs me close like a parent that I wish would whisper that everything will be okay.

For a brief moment there is no body, there is no time; there’s only the breeze, the warmth of the sun, and the vibrant green leaves overlaid on a perfectly blue sky. To me, these moments are what it feels like to truly exist. Not weighed down by a physical construct, but light, existing as nothing but connected to everything, brushing the frayed edges of time and treading so softly on it that I don’t make a wrinkle.

All of these moments are my true timeline, a common thread throughout the illusion of reality that comprises the rest of my consciousness. My life is being carried forward, floating on a flowing stream and occasionally I get to sink below the surface where it's still.

When I’m in that timeless place, placeless space, I exist simultaneously at each glowing point where this miracle has occurred. I don’t believe in an afterlife, but I do believe the universe is bigger than I can understand, and reality can’t be finite or I would never get to dip my fingers in this cool spring of peace and wash away the burden of existence (if only for a second).

This is my prayer:
When I die, let me go to that place where I am the air and the trees and the sunlight, let me go home to this feeling and be carried gently away from this body - because when I am able to forget, I am free.