“I want to take this moment and bottle it up so I can have it forever.”

“You can. You’re a writer. Write about it. Write about the two hummingbirds chasing each other. Write about the wine. Write about how you feel.”

This was one of the last conversations Kyle and I had before he left for the summer. (For those of you who don’t know, he’s spending the summer in Georgia working for LeaderTreks.) I told him that moments that perfect could not be captured in writing–at least, could not be captured accurately. In The Body, Stephen King opens his novella with what I believe is the truest statement about sharing life’s important moments and significant emotions. He writes,

“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them–words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understand what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.”

In today’s society, every moment of your life has to be on display for all to see. We are obsessed with showing off, but I don’t think everything needs to be shared. Some things need to stay bottled up and locked inside. I am not saying you shouldn’t share your life with people, but I am saying that not everything needs to be shared. There are moments too intimate, too difficult to be understood by anyone or anything other than your own heart. There are secret, stolen moments with our loved ones that are perfectly preserved in our memory, and writing or talking about them steals some of their magic. Like Stephen King says, someone might “look at you in a funny way, not understand what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it.” They don’t understand your heart like you (and, hopefully, your loved ones) do and, when they get hold of that special memory and don’t feel the same way about it, you might begin to see that memory as less important too. Some things are meant to be kept “in secret, between the shadow and the soul.” I have tried numerous times, in writing, to capture the hummingbirds and the wine and how I felt that night before Kyle left. I have tried to explain why sitting on the back porch drinking wine and discussing nothing of importance was one of the best moments of my life. But, every time I start to explain it, I stop. No words can accurately paint the picture in someone else’s heart like it does in mine. Maybe it’s just love that we have a hard time explaining, but maybe it’s also because not everything needs to be said. Sometimes it needs to be felt. Sometimes it needs to just be.

–Mads