Just existing...

There are times when I am overcome with frustration...for the inability to accurately describe and record life...for the inevitability of death...for the realization that I can never truly know anyone else nor can anyone else truly know me...for my life being but a speck on a speck of a piece of dust in the grand picture of life.

And then there are those few moments, seconds, breaths. Where I forget everything. Where I just exist. And feel. And smile.

In second grade, I had to memorize a poem that has for some reason stayed with me. A poem by Robert Louis Stevenson. About swinging.

Today, I swung. My feet lifted up, my loose hair flew in the wind and into my face. I looked at the trees, their leaves changing color, remembering that leaves change color this time of year. I guess I had forgotten. Or hadn't cared to notice.

There were no longer any kindergartners running around the playground. I was no longer a teacher. I was in second grade again, reciting that poem, "Oh how I like to go up in a swing...up in the air so blue..."

I smiled.

Then I heard laughter. And saw a group of them, looking up at me, laughing at me, calling my name. Reminding me that to them, I am nothing but their teacher...a foreign older being who was never a kid...who has no first name...acting like a kid and being silly to amuse them.

I focused back in the real world then, doing like a teacher should and sat on the bench watching for kids to yell at to stop pushing or blocking the slide or not sharing their toys.

But inside, I'm still secretly living in that moment. When I existed solely for the sake of myself and my existence.

These moments come ever so briefly, but, to me, they are what make life worth living, and I can never forget that they exist.