Do You Know the Meaning of the Word, “Ephemeral?”

Ephemeral: adj: lasting for a very short time – Oxford Little Dictionary

Ever since we start to read and write as children, it is imposed on us that we should be on a lifelong quest to improve our vocabularies. And why not? The more words you know, the better you will be able to express yourself. The more you rely on words, the less you have to use gestures, facial expressions, and body language. I used to look up words in the dictionary a lot when I was younger but then life gets in the way. You get busy and do not always care as much about adding words to your intellectual database. Every once in a while though, you come across a word that you want to look up the meaning of. Cell phones have made this so easy. You just type it in Google and it gives you the meaning and pronunciation right away. But as we all age, it also becomes easier to forget newly learned words. One proven way around that is to try and use any new word in a sentence right away and you are then unlikely to forget the word and hopefully it gets committed to your memory.

I came across one such word recently. Ephemeral. It is a nice-sounding word. A-fem-erel. Initially when I heard this word, I had a feeling that I knew its meaning but when I started trying to use it in my language, I realized that I actually didn’t know its meaning and had never used it in my conversations or writings. I looked it up and the description of the word in the dictionary was very straightforward – “lasting for a very short time.” It sounded like this word would be the antonym of “eternal.” I liked the word and the meaning instantly and wanted it to be a part of my vocabulary, so I tried to use it in a sentence. As I was racking my brain to make a sentence with the word Ephemeral in it, just like we were taught to do when we were in elementary school, life got in the way. My kids barged in and unapologetically broke my chain of thought and insisted that I drive them to the grocery store right away. 

The next morning, as I was shuffling through my music playlists on Spotify to choose some nice and new music before I started my run, I came across this song which I had heard multiple times before but never paid attention to the lyrics. This time I listened intently and realized that the song was about a number of things in life that are very precious but last for a very short period of time. Suddenly, it clicked that the song was about “ephemeral” things in life and I got excited that I had not forgotten the word and now it was a part of my vocabulary. I listened to the song and started enjoying all the ephemeral things mentioned in the song.

The song spoke about the raindrops that fall from the sky and land on leaves becoming dew drops. The same sun that gives them light to reflect and in doing so, they shine like beautiful diamonds, now dries them up with the heat as they disappear.  I looked around and as I was running by the canal, I could see the dew drops on the grass and the trees and enjoyed the song while it was playing. By the time my run came to an end, most of the dewdrops had evaporated. How ephemeral, I thought.

Ephemeral things in life

The song then spoke about the rays of sunlight that lighten up a courtyard in the midst of a brutal winter but then the evening sets in.  It spoke about those few moments of sleep when you are having a beautiful dream having a conversation with a deceased family member who is alive in the dream, but then you wake up realizing that they are gone. It spoke about a beautiful fragrance that is associated with a childhood memory but you seldom encounter it anymore. It spoke about the feeling of your first crush when you are growing up which can hardly ever be duplicated again.

One of the topmost reasons for people to hate running is because they find it boring. This is exactly the reason why long-distance runners run. While you are at it, while the body has to toil mile after mile, the brain has nothing to do. Unlike any other sport where you have to constantly be thinking about a certain maneuver or to win a point against an opponent, your mind while running doesn’t have much to do. At one point, a detachment happens between your mind and your body. This is the time when the mind drifts away, oblivious of the discomfort being signaled in from the body. The endorphins also kick in around the same time. This is when the mind starts thinking and goes on a very long tangent. Soon not only your body is running but your mind also starts engaging in what seems like a long-distance thought process. This is when I started reflecting on all the ephemeral things in my own life.

Somer the Turkish Tailor

 Just the day prior, I went to the dry cleaners to pick up my shirts. The owner is a Turkish guy, Somer. He is the kind of a guy who still takes cash and does not want to deal with bank cards or other forms of payment. If you are short on change, he tells you that you can pay the balance next time. He is neatly dressed and wears spectacles that visibly appear repaired from one end. He is about the same age as me, in his mid-forties. When he speaks, you feel like he is speaking from his heart. Simplicity is plastered over his face.   Once as I entered his store, he was finishing lunch and I asked him, “Who cooked this meal Somer? It smells nice!”  He said, “My wife,” then a pause, “but the best cook in the whole family is actually my mother-in-law. Here, try this, it’s called a Dolma.”  Having just finished my lunch, I politely declined but thought to myself, who does that anymore nowadays? Who offers you a dolma when you’re picking up your laundry?

Anyways, this day, behind the counter there was a large poster of a young handsome teenager with a congratulatory salutation of “Graduate 2021” written just underneath his picture. I asked him who he was and he said with pride, “This is my eldest son. He got accepted into college.”   I congratulated him. While he was hand-writing a receipt for me, he thanked me but did not look up in my eyes. I got a bit puzzled but then he looked up and to my surprise, I saw tears in his eyes. Thinking that he should be happy that his son graduated, I asked him what happened and he replied, “I’m sad. He wants to go away for college. I will miss him. He is still my little boy. Time went by so fast.” How ephemeral was his son’s childhood to him, I thought.

I had always thought of graduation as a happy event in life but now I wondered if it was actually a sad moment too. I attempted a consolatory remark, “you should be happy Somer that he is a responsible young man on his way to building a nice new life for himself and you should be such a proud father.” But now it was his turn to see my eyes well-up because my mind started to think about my own daughter who was just going to start her sophomore year in high school. She is beaming with the ambition to go to college and already dreaming about dorm life in big cities. I do not feel ready for her to leave me yet. But then perhaps, I never will be.

In the part of the world where I grew up, daughters live with their parents until they get married and it is a very typical visual in movies as much as in real life where the father is crying at the time when the daughter gets married and goes to the house of her husband. The trend is now shifting towards more girls getting educated and seeking local colleges resulting in daughters not leaving the house until a much older age. I thought that I will have to experience the moment of my daughter’s separation just in another three years when she goes to college. I could try to convince her to get admission into a local college but how can I clip the wings of such an ambitious flight. But she was just born I swear. She was just learning to walk and talk. How could she grow up so fast? Why does she have to leave? How will I live without her? Why did her time living with me have to be so ephemeral? Not fair.

Some more ephemeral things in life

Mile after mile, I kept looking back at my life and thought about so many other ephemeral things of the past. My mind wandered to the time when we were kids in elementary school. A house filled with five brothers and our mom and dad. We used to love going to school and used to wait every night until our dad came home and we all sat at the dinner table. At that time, as a child, I was naïve to think that this would be the structure of my life always but it changed in its entirety with the passage of time without even realizing when and how it was changing. If you think of your life in decades, you realize how your life becomes so different in each decade and makes you think how your remaining decades will be, which you have no control over.

We used to go to our maternal grandparents’ house every Sunday for dinner. My aunts and uncles of varying ages would also get together. Our grandmother’s cooking and our grandfather’s hospitality were famous in the family. At that time, we felt that these Sunday family dinners would be a permanent part of our lives. Even after my grandfather retired and perhaps his income dwindled, and my grandmother started aging, limiting her capacity to cook the large family dinners, the get-togethers continued on. Then one day, when we came back from school, we saw our mom very anxious and tearful because my grandfather had had a heart attack. He remained hospitalized for a few days and eventually came back home. On that Sunday, I still vaguely remember getting mentally ready to go for our big family dinner but our mom told us that we will not be going. We didn’t ask why and she didn’t explain either. That was the end of those Sunday dinners. How ephemeral, now that I think about it.

The unhelpful Eritrean Taxi Driver

I recently took the kids on a family trip to New York City. We had a lot of fun. On our way back, we took the cab home from the train station. As I walked out of the station, with two large pieces of luggage dragging behind me, I saw a number of taxis parked right outside. It was extremely cold and the wind chill was bitter. I made eye contact with the taxi driver who was standing first in line. He motioned to me that his taxi was available. Usually, at this point, the taxi drivers get down and help you with loading the luggage in the trunk. He did not show any signs of moving. He lowered the window and asked me to put both pieces of luggage right next to him on the passenger seat. I asked him if he was sure because I did not want to ruin his seats. “Your luggage will be right next to me and I will keep an eye on it.” I rolled my eyes (when he was not looking) and put the heavy pieces on the front seat and asked the kids to get into the taxi. I kept thinking at his discourteous behavior of not even getting out of the car to help me but then I argued with myself that it’s not his job to haul luggage for me. I should be able to handle my own suitcases.

As we started driving towards our house, he started talking to us. He told us that he was from Eritrea and had lived in Rochester for about fifteen years which is about the same period of time I have also lived here. I told them that my kids who were accompanying me were both born in Rochester. He told me that he was Muslim and we both knew the Imam of our Islamic Center. He asked us where we were returning from. We told him that we had an amazing vacation in New York City. We enjoyed a musical and walked along the Brooklyn Bridge for the first time. So far the whole conversation was nothing but predictable small talk. Then he asked a question that changed the mood in the car. “And where is mommy?” He obviously did not know that we had divorced and the kids’ mother lived in another state. “She lives in Virginia,” I said. He went silent for a few moments as if he did not know how to respond. He was clearly taken aback by our situation. Finally he responded, “But kids this age cannot live without their mother?” This is when my daughter, who is growing into an intelligent young woman, stepped in, “No it’s OK, this is the best arrangement for our family.” This was a very polite way of saying, “We don’t want your pity, we are managing well.”

We continued small talk for the rest of the taxi ride. When our home arrived, I got down again thinking that he may help a little with unloading the luggage. But this time again, he did not move out of his seat. I shrugged my shoulders and pulled out my heavy luggage from the passenger seat. Still feeling a bit awkward about our conversation in the car, I asked him how much money I owed him. As I was handing him over the cash, my eyes drifted towards him and now it was my turn to be taken aback. He had no legs! He was driving the car using a metal device where he was able to press the gas and brake pedals with his hands. This solved the conundrum of why he wasn’t getting down to help me with my luggage. As a physician I feel comfortable asking people about their medical issues so I asked, “How did you lose your legs?” He replied, “Polio my friend. You don’t see this disease anymore because of vaccines but a lot of kids lost their legs when I was a child.” Trying to make him at ease I said, “Oh yes, I know exactly what you’re talking about. I have an aunt who has lost all function of her right arm because of Polio.” As an attempt at commiseration, I said, “It must be hard for you to make a living this way though.” This time, it was his moment to give me an “I don’t need your pity” look and he replied, “No thanks to God. I manage just fine.”

This was only a short taxi ride home. A brief casual conversation. An epehemeral moment. But it reiterated an important lesson. Everybody that we come across in life is going through their own struggles. They are on a journey to remain happy in the face of adversity. It is important to understand and respect that.

Lesson to be learnt from ephemeral things in life

The last thing I want to do is to leave you with the feeling that ephemeral is a negative word, an unwanted emotion. There has to be something good about this word too. It’s quite similar in character to nostalgia, which is a tricky emotion. It makes you wonder whether it leaves you more sad or happy. Life is a constant struggle where happiness is achieved only if you can learn to live in the moment.

I will copy a beautiful phrase from Elif Shafaq’s Forty Rules of Love:

“The past is an interpretation. The future is an illusion. The world does not move through time as if it were a straight line proceeding from the past to the future. Instead time moves through us and within us in endless spiral.”

The present moment is all that was and all that will be. When we understand this fact, there will be nothing left to fear. But it is so difficult to live in the moment. The mind keeps wandering ahead or behind all the time. Some people constantly live in the past and cannot let go. Others are so focused on the future that their “today” is miserable. One way of trying to live in the moment is to constantly look around and find the ephemeral things in life. If you look, you will find them. Lots of them. In fact, our whole existence is so ephemeral. The entire documented human history is only a few thousand years old. The size of our planet compared to the vastness of the universe is frighteningly miniscule. In the midst of such an ephemeral existence, happiness is to live each ephemeral moment with such presence of mind and awareness, so as to make its beauty eternal. It is not easy to do, but it’s worth trying, every once in a while.

January 16, 2022

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