Today is 26 October 2025. The President of the United States has attended the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur. I am now in Hong Kong for a business trip. How are you, my dearest sweetheart? Were you remembering me so much that I could do nothing but think of you? I first wrote this letter on 22 May 2025. Eight years ago, on this very day, I received the most heart-wrenching news — that the love of my life would soon belong to someone else. I felt devastated, yet I pretended to be fine.
I didn’t want to be sad. I wanted to be happy, to let go of the past, to be ukiyo — detached, drifting freely through the currents of time. I tried, but it never worked. Perhaps I should have tried harder. In Letters to Milena, Franz Kafka wrote, “I’m tired, can’t think of anything, and want only to lay my face in your lap, feel your hand on my head, and remain like that through all eternity.” I miss you, yet you are nowhither to be found. Sometimes, this longing grows too heavy to bear.
I try not to think of you, but it always ends the same — it is you I end up thinking about. Last year, the time we had together felt ephemeral — gone in a heartbeat. It was as if life had only loaned me those moments, then reclaimed them before I could even say goodbye. When I later read that Skype would be shut down on May 5th, the news felt strangely symbolic — another door closing. The ache grew into headaches and a heaviness in my chest that no medicine could touch. I was exhausterwhelmulated.
The Japanese have a phrase — ichi-go ichi-e (一期一会) — meaning that every encounter happens only once in a lifetime. It will never repeat. Perhaps that is why love, in its beauty, hurts so much: because its essence is impermanence. They also say, 人の心は川のように流れる — the human heart flows like a river. No moment, and no feeling, is ever the same twice. It is true — some relationships last, some disappear. But what once was can’t stay the same, no matter how much we wish it otherwise.
Marcus Aurelius reminded us, “Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together.” Mahmoud Darwish wrote words that still echo through me “We once said that only death would tear us apart. Death was late, and we split.” Jean de La Fontaine added gently, “Sadness flies away on the wings of time.” Yet even after a decade, nothing has truly changed. Poetry captures it perfectly “A thousand enemies cannot wound the heart as one lover does.”
A day has 86,400 seconds. One million seconds make 11.5 days. A billion seconds — 31.7 years. In Philosophy and Life, A.C. Grayling wrote, “Human lifespan is very brief; it is less than a thousand months long. A large part of it has gone even before we realize its brevity.” He also said, “How long you live is not measured by quantity but by quality.” And what greater quality is there than spending time thinking of you — all the quiet details of your days; the small, beautiful ordinaries that once felt like home.
ada banyak jalan
dan setiap jalan punya penjuru
ada banyak kenangan
dan aku cuma mau
mengingatmu.
— Usman Arrumy