What is more important, a person’s past or his future?

Kulas and I both have different experiences that have shaped what we are now and how we lead ourselves. We have lived our lives so differently yet so similarly at the same time. But now that we are together, I wonder about the weight of these experiences, at least the significance of these to his life now.

The twenty-year gap between us is not a joke at all.

Between conversations in the car, during dinner, over coffee—in varying moods and momentums, his past and mine surface. In my case, I have long gotten over what-could-have-beens and looking back is only a luxury I indulge myself in from time to time. I wonder, then, is it the same with him? Though he says, the past is over, could there be thoughts of what-ifs in his mind? Perhaps an undisclosed desire that the past never went as it did?

Isn’t the future too short and too uncertain to be valued? We put too much importance onto a yet unknown chasm of time that’s bound to swallow us alive or dead, depending on how we play it. But the past, the past already has its stories to tell, its innumerable characters and twists in plot that we play again and again in our minds. The past carries names, wounds, scars, songs. And the future? It only has a promise. A promise of more names, wounds, scars, and more songs.

When he tells you you are his future, don’t you just get relegated into a limbo, a state that’s all the more changeable and unsure?

We try to be careful and take hold of uncertainties: a life insurance, a spare key, an umbrella in case it rains. But really, we will never know.