The Silence Between Moments
We are here. Right now. Alive, awake, and living this moment. Yet one day, we will wish we could stay—while today, we seem always to be rushing forward, saying “go.”
There’s a constant pull into the future, a curiosity that drives us to discover what lies ahead. But equally strong is the quiet ache that calls us back, urging us to relive the past. Is our nostalgia simply the sweetness of memory, or is it a veil that softens our pain, covering old wounds with a gentle filter?
At times, life feels like heaven. At others, like hell. Perhaps, in truth, it is neither. What if all of this—the triumphs, the sorrows, the illusions of “good” and “bad”—is simply a construct? A version of reality created by the mind, shaping our perception of existence.
This realization came to me recently: if reality is only an illusion, then the spirit within longs to be free of it. Awakening often comes only through great trials—sometimes even at the brink of death, when we’re forced to let go. Near-death experiences and other profound encounters open a door to a truth beyond this version of the world.
And yet, art holds a special kind of power. It can suspend a single moment, allowing us to revisit it—not as memory distorted by time, but as something preserved, alive in itself.
This is what I found in my most recent piece, one I have been working on slowly over the past two years. It’s a simple scene, yet filled with quiet peace—a kind of stillness our grandparents or great-grandparents would have recognized deeply. Their days were anything but easy, especially those who worked the land without machines, yet there was a profound simplicity in their way of life.
The silence of the piece is tangible. I drew from my own photograph, remembering the stillness of that moment: no vehicles in the distance, only two horses, calm and unmoved by my presence. The mediums—conte, colored graphite, graphite, and grey paper—helped capture that subdued quiet, that weight of silence.
A line from Gordon Lightfoot comes to mind, from his song about the building of the Canadian railway: “And many are the dead men, too silent to be real.” One day, we too will join that silence. Art reminds me of this truth—that peace can be found in memory, that life is fleeting, and that perhaps freedom lies in shedding the illusions we cling to.
For now, as Lightfoot also sang, “Open your heart, let the lifeblood flow, gotta get on our way ‘cause we’re moving too slow.”
May we carry forward with open hearts, remembering the silence, and finding peace in the spaces between moments.
