Lucas's Blog

All the memories compress into a final wave goodbye.

Every laugh, every moment, every life-altering experience

Gathered up and packed away in the space of a single moment.

Out of the present.

Into the past.

A fleeting moment once more

You watch an entire other chapter of your life turn over once again

A sibling

An old friend

A new friend

As they disappear into a crowd, a taxi, a train

You can feel those tears from behind your eyes

The ones that come from a different place inside of you

They’re not tears of grief or sadness

But one’s of happiness

Gratitude for being a part of something so special

The sides of your lips quiver

Your chest feels heavy, but not in a way that hurts

It’s the weight of a beautiful ending

A page-turning at the right time

It’s happiness and sadness tangled together

Grateful for what was

Aching because it’s over

Knowing you wouldn’t trade it for anything

And desperate to have that feeling all over again

If you’ve travelled, I’m sure you’ve had this feeling

Let me let you in on a secret

It never gets any easier

That moment time meets itself

How slowly it felt in the moment

Connects with the pace of life

Those long, drawn-out days being away

Seeing new places, days in transit, planning the next adventure

All summed up in those fleeting final moments together

It’s not just in the travel sphere

But life itself

Your Best friend moves away

A relative passes

Your first car ends up on the back of a tow truck

These moments are what define us

What we enjoyed in the moment

Those pieces of time we took for granted

The smiling, the laughter, the joy

All fade away

What makes life unique is its impermanence

Its ability to shift, to change

To take us on a new course in pursuit of our own dreams

The people we will meet along the way

All, equally on their own journeys

To feel emotions so viscerally

With tears waiting just behind our eyes

Is to know you’ve truly lived

It’s proof you’ve tasted the full spectrum of what it means to be human.

You’ve laughed until your stomach ached.

You’ve loved so deeply that your heart stretched beyond what you thought it could hold.

You’ve travelled through unfamiliar streets and felt the world open itself up.

You’ve eaten meals that weren’t just food, but stories

Shared across tables with strangers who became friends.

You’ve been changed by places

By people

By moments that arrived without warning and left without asking permission.

You’ve sat with burned skin under a sunset

Day turns into night

Surrounded by the only people who can understand how special that moment was,

And most of all — you’ve shared.

With your family

With old companions,

With those who, by some divine intervention, came into your life

and left their mark on it

That’s why the goodbye stings.

Because it means something worth missing has taken place.

The sadness is not the enemy — it’s the evidence.

These moments aren’t just about the places you go

They’re about the people you share them with.

It’s the inside jokes that made no sense to anyone else

Born out of some random overnight bus ride or late-night walk back to the hostel.

It’s the group chat that kept buzzing with plans, memes, and WhatsApp stickers.

It’s the endless photos you took

Not those aesthetic ones with a perfect sunset and a group of smiles

The ones that tell a story on their own

The laughter of the moment, captured like a message in a bottle

It’s because you were there with those people, at that time in your life

and you never want to forget it

It’s the meals crammed around tiny tables

The beers on hostel rooftops

The hours lost to card games that felt more vital than nutrition

Day after day, it all feels so constant

You wake up and those faces are just there.

Another adventure, another train, another laugh.

It becomes routine

The best kind of routine.

And then, suddenly, it isn’t.

One hug at a station, one wave out the back of a taxi, one last shared look that says

“Fuck, these might be the good old days everyone talks about”.

All of a sudden, it’s regular programming

Holidays end, people go back to work, back home

Everything goes back to some normality

But something remains in its place

Something so subtle you might miss it

It’s that bond of experience

That brain full of memories no one else has

Those photos might sit in your camera roll like they belong to another life.

But wherever life takes you

No one can take away what you rightfully enjoyed and experienced

But you will feel that ache

That mix of happy and sad that only comes when something truly mattered.

Not everyone gets to feel that.

To have moments and people that are worth missing.

That’s the privilege of parting.

Bittersweet distilled to its core

Enriched for what was, aching that it’s over

The rollercoaster of what it is to experience life

The very best moments always come with that sickening feeling of what was

The ache of knowing they’ve already slipped into the past.

They’re the moments of magic you’ll tell your kids about one day.

The ones that stick.

Everyone has their own version of them

Some people just collect them in greater volume.

The juice is worth the squeeze.

They want life to be overflowing with memories and experiences

The kind that will keep them warm until your last breath.

Some people spend their whole lives chasing this feeling

The one you can’t buy, the one no object will ever give you.

You won’t find it wrapped in a new watch or parked in a driveway.

You find it in the messy

The unpredictable

Unforgettable and unplanned moments that come only from saying yes to things

And yet, some people never feel it at all.

They stay where it’s safe.

They avoid the discomfort of putting themselves out there

Of trying something new, of seeing the world

For being selfish and putting their own dreams before anyone else’s

They’ll never know what it’s like sitting down with strangers and letting them become friends.

They never get the privilege of parting

because they never allow themselves the privilege of beginning.

If I’ve learned anything over the past few years

It’s that the sadness of saying goodbye only shows up after you’ve had the time of your life.

It’s the tax you pay for experiences so rich they stay with you forever.

The tears in your eyes are proof that you’ve built bonds

Strange, beautiful, unlikely bonds

With people you’ll carry with you, even if you never see them again.

Seek those moments.

Go to the places no one in your family has ever gone.

Go with friends.

Go alone.

Say yes to things that scare you a little

Because on the other side of fear is a story you’ll tell for the rest of your life.

Every moment you share

With a place, a meal, a stranger, a friend

It changes you.

It alters your life in ways you won’t always notice until much later

When you’re sitting on a train platform

Waving goodbye

With your heart cracked open just enough to let it all in.

That’s the privilege.

That’s the point of it all.

I wouldn’t have been able to write about this feeling if I hadn’t experienced it so viscerally

To all the people I’ve met in my daily life, travels, or career,

You’ve all made my life richer

Sometimes tears don’t flow for me so easily

But the memories I share with you are some of my most treasured assets

The happiness they have brought me has been directly attributed to the person I am today

And I often reflect on my life so far, and how lucky I’ve been

If you’re reading this, thank you

I want my life to be filled with an endless amount more of these.

It really is a privilege to feel that sadness.

Only because it means you’ve had the time of your life.

Cue Good Riddance (Time of your life) – Green day

LB