Maybe it’s the holidays, or me trying to justify how much money I’ve been spending, or how selfish I feel, but this poem by Delmore Schwartz bubbled up in my mind:
May memory restore again and again
The smallest color of the smallest day:
Time is the school in which we learn,
Time is the fire in which we burn.
Delmore Schwartz, “Calmly We Walk Through This April’s Day