“Life is made of moments”

My climbing buddy brought up this favorite phrase of his (again) on the weekend of my double anniversary celebration at the end of January. I think he meant it in an uplifting way when he said it as we stood around chatting after having gone out dancing at the queer club. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about this phrase, “Life is made of moments”, since then. 

As much as my buddy says it & probably feels it profoundly, he does have a level of deep continuity in some aspects of his life which seem important: he’s had the same job and the same romantic/sexual/nesting partner for almost a decade and they have been living together in the same part of the world (this area of Colorado) for almost a decade. This is some major continuity that almost seems at odds with his phrase, “Life is made of moments”. Or, if it’s not at odds, it at least lends some counterbalancing stability & continuity to the ever-shifting nature of the idea that “life is made of moments”. 

In comparison, I feel that my “life has just been made of moments”, with no real stability or continuity, for years now. No continuous career, no stable living-place, no long-term romantic/sexual/nesting partner(s) for years. 

Am I just drifting? Or it this such a deeply-set part of me & my identity that all I can do is come to terms & make peace with it? 

I keep coming back to this fact, to the two sides of the same coin that seems to define me & my life: the need & search for freedom, independence, exploration, adventure, and change, on which I thrive, on the one hand; the sense of fragility and lacking any form of continuity or stability, on the other. Does the pain or fear or self-doubt or self-judgement connected to this latter side, leading to a desire for some form of continuity or stability, arise from some other deep part of my identity or is it instead due to social/cultural conditioning that is toxic for me (because not aligned with whom I really am or how I function)?