Oliver Freyermuth
4 min read

Even if we forget the faces of our friends, we will never forget the bonds that were carved into our souls.

Jun Maeda — Otonashi Yuzuru in Angel Beats (2010)

Time is fleeting, racing — towards a new morning, a new ocean of dreams. A plaything of this craze we are. Lives and emotions flying by, imagery which may be soon forgotten. Who is it I was friends with 10 years ago? Is there any lasting constant, any persistency, any stable feeling?

Dreams and people pass by, changing their shape, colour and aura. A constant stream of fleeting change, ephemeral bonds and volatile emotions breaking away. When all is said and done, what is it that remains?


The fire of life is burning, eating, clasping dreams and friends. But time ruptures the clamps, pulls them away, to be forlorn in the endless stream of memories.

Few are the moments when time slows down and a calm tune remains, forming the silence necessary to remember what has been. The sparse fragments of memories, the sparkling bits and pieces. Watch them tumble in this insanely turbulent, whirling wind of your mind.


Time does not pass without traces. Each and every second, a new memory is made, a bubble of dreams created or destroyed. A silent voice forms a wish, a desire fulfilled, a friend obtained, a loved one lost. Each of the shiny fragments is part of the picture: the soul is carved by the sculptor of time. Experience is nothing if frozen in time.


Time is turning the wheel of fate, experience and the instruments to carve the soul.

You shall not escape this process of endless carving. The multifacetted voyage of life is given colour by time. Memories may fade, but emotions remain, etched into our selves. Even if the bonds and scars lost their concious presence, their mental image expresses itself in shaping the emotional being you are.


The wheels keep turning. Faster, ever faster, as if chased by an unseen fiend, on and on they rotate towards an unknown future. We can not escape, nor leave this racetrack the world has put in front of each and every one. However, we must strive to take a pit stop every now and then — look back and contemplate, touch and feel the picture drawn on the fabric of your very being. Only then, we know who we are, who we become, and who we may want to be.