In our world today there are so few opportunities to miss things. I miss missing things. I don't miss having access to food; I have access to food everywhere and at all times. I don't miss music; any song ever recorded is in my pocket. I don't miss light; I can make my house brighter than the sun any time I want. I don't miss being informed about the world; it takes a heroic effort to be uninformed.
It's hard to miss people, too. I have no excuse to have time apart from people. I can text or call or Facetime anyone at any moment. Practically speaking, death or estrangement are the only ways we can get away with missing someone. There is no benign way of not speaking to or seeing someone for a while because doing these things are so easy.
I find, though, that I do miss some things. I miss a simple meal after a day of hunger. I miss a pitch-black night after a bright day. I miss that first moment of a concert or a CD or a record when I hear the music I've waited a long time to hear again. I miss places so absent of noise that I can hear the breeze blow over things. I miss the days I had where I used to wonder about the answers to things, but I had to wait until I could go to the library and find books about them.
I miss, most of all, the days when I almost forgot the way a person looked, or the sound of their voice, or the quirks of their personality, and then they were there again, in my presence, and I was flooded with joy.
A world without missing is a world without joy.
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