Walking out of work on a sunny day, I caught a sense of nostalgia. I say caught because nostalgic memories are sometimes elusive, fleeting things where the harder I try to remember the moment, the quicker it fades, like recalling a dream.

The smell of the warm summer air and mulch from the landscaping combined with hot pavement took me back to a specific time in my life. I couldn’t say what day it was, what happened for sure in that moment, but I remembered how it made me feel. The moment hung in my mind like a portrait. Looking within the frame, the picture is clear. If you look around, nothing related to that scene is outside the frame.

I reveled in that memory of standing on the hot pavement of a parking lot at the marina I frequented with my family during the summer. Our modest boat was docked there every year, a tradition passed from my grandfather to my own father, much like the boat. I remember looking at the tall, green trees of the camping area and the blue, sunny sky. The old wooden pavilion caught in my periphery. It was a perfect moment for no other reason other than it was beautiful.

I tried to think about why I liked that moment. I was too young to have a job or care about much at all, with little to no responsibility. This aspect stuck in my mind. The fact that in that moment, I was free. Free from worry, free from bills and rent. Though, that doesn’t quite capture why I was drawn back to that moment. I never really landed on an answer other than the fact that I just was perfectly happy in that moment.

That thought brought me back to every other warm summer day I could remember. Similar, yet distinctly different memories that all present themselves in unique ways. To me, I think that’s what nostalgia might be. A collection of brief, perfect moments. They may play out in a scene within my mind or just present me with a quick snapshot of days gone by but either way, they give me the same feeling, pure happiness upon the recall of that memory.

At the time, in any of those moments, there’s no way I would have known that I’d look back to that very second and become perfectly happy. In the moment, the moment occurs and then it’s gone. Forever lost but not forgotten. It makes me wonder if, at some point, I’ll realize that I’m in one of those moments as it’s occurring and realize the significance of what I’m doing or seeing. Are those moments only nostalgic because we don’t realize they’ll ever be important? Lives change, things evolve, and we remember a time that is happier in retrospect. In the now, it’s just existence. In the future, even a fleeting moment from this day could be remembered fondly.

Perfection is but a moment in a world of constant change. It's an equilibrium that will not last forever or even a minute. Hold on to those moments like a collection of priceless portraits, because they truly are priceless.