A pulse in time

Some places have a unique ability to absorb the energy and passion of people who have visited them.

It does not happen often, only the purest manifestations of intentions have the intensity to do so. Yet, it can happen everywhere.

From the holiest sites to the darkest corners of the world, and maybe more interestingly also in those unmemorable places of everyday life.

Sometimes I think as I walk by the streets of my city that something extraordinary for someone may have happened exactly where I am standing.

Someone may have tripped and broken their arm just minutes before their dissertation, proposed to their sweetheart and heard a longing yes, learnt a piece of life-changing news, lost their life.

In this exact place that is entirely meaningless to me and that I will undoubtedly forget in a few moments.

Sometimes though I know unequivocally that I am somewhere significant. It is like entering a pulse in time where the air vibrates a little different, filled with a mysterious aftertaste of life. I am not sure what happened, but I know something important has.

You may have experienced this sensation too when entering a place of worship, like a church or a stadium.

The devotion of thousands of souls, the imprint of belief resilient to all adversities and a desperate will for life. Emotions of hundreds of people in tens of years that permeated every stone and slit through their violent presence and now pulse for all eternity in this newly-sacred spot.

It's not common for me to sin of such arrogance, but I do feel so very similarly underneath the shadow of this pear tree.

I can feel the love I felt those years ago emanating from every line of the bark up to the long stretches of its branches, even blossoming in the new leaves and flowers that could not have possibly been there all that time ago.

It does fill me with a warm feeling of peace to imagine my love to be everlasting too, like the devotion in a church. This pear tree as a living monument that love was so true and intense that it manifested itself in reality.

That I still feel it in me should be a good enough sign of its eternity. Yet doubt comes easy and hardly leaves when you hold something internally that the external world keeps challenging.

When everyone tells you to move on. To forget. To replace it with something new someone new.

As if I could let that part of me die.

Feeling knotted up, I look up to the shy rays of sun filtering through the leaves and blossoms and I get taken back to the hazy memory of that day.

A soft touch of the lips was all it took to make me promise eternal dedication. I had been waiting for a long time, the surrender was easy under the warm cover of this immense pear tree.

In a few months, love ignited, shone, burnt and extinguished in a glorious explosion of colours. Even though my violent delight reached its violent end, the promise stayed intact like a phoenix rising proudly from its ashes.

I've wondered often if it was right for me to hold on to it until I realised. It's in my nature to keep it alive. That it once was is enough. Because if it existed even for a moment, then it was real. Real and possible for others to feel. For you to have felt. And this hope may just be enough.

And so I hope. With all my heart, I hope for anyone to walk by this beautiful pear tree and feel my love. Be inspired by it. For them to spread it around, keep it alive, make it blossom in new shapes of ecstasy.

Then, all my hurt would not have been for nothing. My life would have been for something.