you know sometimes you just stop and look around and it just HITS you right in the chest it’s like a sudden wave of anhedonia but not exactly because you’re feeling something it’s just not what you expected and not what you really wanted it’s more like a profound sense of temporal displacement a sort of existential dread I guess that’s the fancy term for it but what it really is is just seeing yourself you know like a small thing a very small thing in a very big picture that happened to me just the other day I was up on the new bridge the one going over the river to the next town the one we’ve been building for what feels like forever and the sun was setting all orange and purple over the hills you could practically smell the damp earth turning cool after a warm day and I just paused you know taking a breath before getting back to it and I looked out at the span we’ve put up and I thought about how it’s gonna stand there for a hundred years maybe more people will drive over it fish under it tell their kids stories about the old bridge you know the one their grandpappy worked on and I just stood there watching the last light fade and thinking about how that bridge will see so much more than I ever will and it got me thinking about how we all just blink out you know how our lives they’re just these little flashes in the pan like fireflies on a summer night here for a moment then gone and it’s not just me it’s everyone even the young folks in town who think they’ve got all the time in the world they’re just another blink and that bridge it’ll just keep standing there indifferent to all of us and all our little dramas and heartaches it’s a funny thing to build something that will outlast you by such a margin it’s almost a cruel joke in a way or maybe it’s a comfort I haven’t really figured that part out yet if it’s a comfort or if it’s just another form of that melancholic rumination that seems to creep up more often these days like a fog rolling in off the river it’s not like I haven’t lived a full life I mean I've seen things done things made mistakes had triumphs small ones sure but triumphs nonetheless but still you look at that solid steel and concrete and then you look at your own wrinkled hands and you think about how ephemeral it all is and it makes you wonder what was the point of all the hustle you know all the early mornings and the aching muscles and the scraped knuckles just to build something that will stand for a century while you’re just a ghost in the breeze by then and nobody even remembers your name anyway except maybe old man Henderson down at the feed store and even he’s starting to forget where he put his keys so that’s not really saying much is it no it’s just a thought a quiet thought that comes with the setting sun and the smell of fresh concrete drying and the knowledge that some things are just built to last and some things are just not