This is not about the physics stuffs. It is the speed at which cherry blossoms petals fall. A very slow speed it is, but if you do really observe the petals falling to the ground, you will see that the petals will seperate from each other slowly but discernly. This natural event can be a wonderful methaporical representation of the nature of human relationships; how we often start together but slowly turn into their seperate ways.
I am heavily stimulated by an anime with the same name. The anime's main idea is very simple. There are a boy and a girl who have been good friends since they were in the primary schools. Their relationship had grown to the extent that each of them longed for a relationship that is more than standard friendship. Unfortunately, they had to move to other cities as their parents' occupations demand. They lost contact since Sec 1. The male character cannot erase the memory and the unrequited feeling that he has for her. One day, he saw a very familiar figure walking to the opposite direction while crossing a railroad in the city where he and the girl used to play when they were kids. Convinced that the figure is the girl he loves, he turned back to look at the figure. However, two trains passed and deterred his sight. The girl disappeared when the trains had gone.
Though the love story is very touching and tragic, I choose to ponder more on the metaphor. Can this idea be applied to all human relationships besides the unrequited love relationship like the on in the anime? Frightfully, it can. I route my memory to recall all my friends and all the time when I played and talked with them. It feels so easy to forget them though I used to spend all my leisure time together with them. It is natural yet strange to see that all my childhood friends are slowly but surely replaced with my current friends now. I have an extreme question in my mind: what is the purpose of befriending someone if at the end of the day I must walk the different path and get them replaced by someone else?
I also observe the stories from my seniors. They all have the same experience. In their first year in Singapore, they still kept in touch with their old friends in their hometown. Their old friends would like to meet and greet him gracefully when my seniors visited their old schools. As time goes on, the old friends start to loosen their attention and gratitude to my seniors. I think the exact thing will happen to me. No matter how many friends I have made in my own school, my existence will start to rot when I'm no longer besides them. There will be someone else, someone new and unique, who will replace my place in their hearts. Am I afraid to think of that? Strangely, I am not. I also begin to get used to my life now though I still miss the good old days.
Let's say that at this point I assume that my own existence will never be eternal in other's mind. How about the male character in that anime who never forgets of his childhood girlfriend? He despises any possibilties of having relationships with other girls. Will he be like that until he dies or is it because nobody has successfully replaced the girl's place in his heart? On the other hand, the girl can even marry other guy despite her strong feeling towards him (I'm sure that her feeling isn't less bitter than his). Maybe that guy has successfully taken her heart with all his attentions and care, but most likely he will never erase her memory of her old boyfriend. That is why she disappeared quickly when she met him in the railroad. She wanted to avoid any possibilities that her old wound would be opened, thus disturbing and destroying her marriage life.
Besides distance and time, the third barrier would be death. I realize now how old people sometimes suffer because they no longer have parents to give them shoulders to cry on. Does maturity bring the strength to forget the existence of the people who used to care for us when they were still alive? I don't know. Nonetheless, this where I found the irony. Distance and time, those two things that seperate people to their own different paths, make it easier to accept the death of someone who is very close to you. I don't see mature people crying crazily when their old parents are buried. It's different from the photographs of the people grieveing in Sichuan when their young realtives unexpectedly died in the tragic earthquake.
However, there are many cases when people start to regret painfully when their beloved die. This is the point when we are reminded of how uneternal life is. How we often waste worthful chance to express our care and attention.
Nobody can be 100% sure that they will met their beloved ones again in the afterlife. Philosophy will never be enough to ensure or disapprove that claim. I think nothing in this world can. That is why, according to the probability, which is rationale, we should try to avoid wasting all the chance of giving love and care when we still have time to share with the people we love and care.
Maybe or age is speeding slwoer than 5 centimeters per second, but if you look back at the history of human civilization, our life is unbelievably short...