moment

It's interesting how things happen. They happen suddenly. There's a second when things change. They go from being this way, to, a moment later, that way. Death is like that. One second a person is here, the next they're not. Birth is the same, just opposite. In a second it starts raining. Water boils and freezes. There's a moment when you fall asleep. The sun rises and sets, days begin and end, all in an incalculably small speck of time. It might feel like these things happen slowly, but they don't. There's always a moment, and then things aren't the same anymore.



I always try to pay attention to these moments throughout my day. There's the moment I go from being asleep to awake. In the shower, when the first drop hits my forehead I go from being dry to wet. When I eat, I go from being hungry to satiated. There's a specific moment when I begin work. Class periods begin and end and begin.

Truth works the same way, subjectively at least. I can know a thing, and in an instant something happens and it's no longer true. New information arrives and you change. This can happen with the mundane; perhaps I think my next period will be free, but then my boss comes to me and in a second I now know that I have another class. Or it can happen with the abstract; personal philosophies and world views can change in a flash. Think about this: there's an instant when zero becomes not zero.

Some of these changes are everyday occurrences. These can be hard to notice, or maybe it's better to say that they are easy to overlook. But every once in a while there's a change that jumps out at me, and it makes me keenly aware that these moments of change are happening all around me. The world is full of them, there's not a moment that goes by that doesn't bring a change with it. And while not every change happens to me, they are still happening in this Universe that I'm a part of, and if a change occurs in my surroundings, isn't that going to get to me eventually, even if it's in an insignificant way? Think of a sunset. From my perspective, there's an instant the sun completely disappears from view. But to someone a mile behind me, his sunset is at a different moment. In each moment the sun is rising and setting and getting you closer to the sun rising and setting.

I had one of these moments today, and I took a picture of it. It was one of the truth ones.

Now, I know this looks innocuous to you. Just shelves in a grocery store. But there's something special in this picture, and the moment I saw it a truth in my life changed. Have a closer look:

It's there. Middle shelf, all the way on the left.

Campbell's Tomato Soup.

Coming home after being gone for a long time is always a treasure. It's not a thing that lends itself to words very well. It's a feeling in my chest and the back of my neck. It feels like an echo, but one that gets louder. It's the opposite of a nightmare slipping out of your memory upon waking. It's all the things I've missed, all the things I've forgotten that I've missed, all the things I love coming back to me. It's my family. It's my friends. And, it's Campbell's Tomato Soup.

Most cravings one gets while here for the comforts of home can be satisfied. But the one thing I could never find was tomato soup. I'd even occasionally search online for recipes and instructions on how to make your own tomato soup. Every grocery store I've ever been in here, I've gone to the canned food aisle and hoped. It was always the same: Cream of Mushroom - check. Chicken Soup - check. But not a can of Tomato Soup to be found. And that was my life, and in a moment it changed.

My truth went from I live in Korea and don't have access to tomato soup, to I live in Korea and have access to tomato soup. It changed in a moment and it made me smile.