when you have it

Photo by Plato Terentev

choose to look at it
like it’s something you’ll someday miss…
stuff that annoys you
things that set your teeth on edge
the stupid things that bother you now
will be the vanished parts you long for soon
nostalgia cooks the good with the bad
so that even sour moments
taste somehow sweet to a future you…
the behaviors, the quirks
bad habits and peccadilloes — all of it…
choose to look at them
like the jewels you’ll cherish…
the salient features of a well-lived journey
the golden cracks in a beautiful bowl
the patch of fabric on a sewn-up hole
no one is perfect
flawlessness isn’t the goal
it’s knowing what you have
when you have it…
that’s what life is about, after all

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Garbage Notes:

The simple message in this poem is to appreciate the things you have while you have them.

As time goes on, it can be easy to focus on all the annoying or frustrating parts of life— the ways in which your luck should or could have been better. But ultimately this perfection-seeking is foolish.

Life has so much in store for you. And it can be rather punishing at times. So, when you have even a few good things, you should slow down long enough to realize it.

The line that stands out to me most in this poem is, “nostalgia cooks the good with the bad, so that even sour moments taste somehow sweet to a future you.”

I’ve come to understand that our minds have a protective mechanism to them. We can forget. And I don’t mean burying shit deep down so you don’t have to think of bad things. I mean as the years go on, our memory is adapted towards glossing over the shitty parts and shining light on the good.

I am grateful for this sort of memory bias, and it’s the kind of thing that gives you perspective as you get older. It helps you appreciate moments that maybe didn’t go as you expected them to, but that everything still worked out all right anyway.

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Franco Amati 2026

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