Time seems to be linear When I was sixteen, "Seventeen forever" was my number one song These days I can't stand listening to it Nonetheless, they were right We won't be seventeen forever Sometimes we can't return to being seventeen because we're gone And we're not there to wonder whether we could return Friends, partners, offspring, family..  There is nothing and nobody that we really own Everything and everyone is on loan There is nothing we can hold on to Only barely ourselves Life is hard Just for some it is harder than for others Some have to go through a living hell And won't get out of it While others go through smaller living hells And come out of them stronger and healthier There is nothing we can take for granted Still we are full of pretentious confidence Perhaps this being a mode of survival It laces up the throats of others What have we learned? Here and now is what matters It's really all we have Apart from the memory of being seventee