The Passage of Time, in Life and in Stories
As months pass, my attention to Dreams of the Future comes and goes like the tides. Some days it feels near, alive, pressing against my mind’s door. Other days it drifts further out, distant and quiet, like a horizon I can see but cannot touch. In a way, that ebb and flow resembles the very thing this book attempts to capture; the inevitable passage of time itself. Time never halts, no matter how tightly we wish to hold it in our hands.
When I think back, I can still remember vividly the first seed of what would become Echoes of the Past. It feels like yesterday, yet it was born in one of the harshest chapters of my life.
Out of Darkness, a Spark
My beloved mother had just passed away after a long illness. In that grief, I was broken deep down, disconnected from the world around me. I did not truly see, or rather, I pretended to see. The pain was too raw. Dark thoughts swallowed much of me, and for a time, I wondered if there was any escape from their grip.
But as the old stories say, when you find yourself in complete darkness, the smallest spark of light can change everything. For me, that light came from those who remained: my father, my older brother, and the rest of my close family. Together, we became each other’s pillars. We held each other up in ways words can only begin to describe.
And through faith, I felt my mother was not gone completely. I felt she was watching over us from above, guiding us quietly, reminding me of something I had nearly forgotten; that life is not only an ending, but also a continuation.
The Lessons Woven Into Stories
This is what I mean when I say stories are not born of luck. They are born of life; of its tragedies, its lessons, its small victories, and its rare joys. A story worth telling must reflect those truths.
Echoes of the Past became that reflection for me: a story born in darkness, shaped by grief, and lit by the sparks of love and faith that survived in the cracks. It was never only fiction. It was also a vessel for memory, for messages that continue past the life of the one who inspired them.
And now, Dreams of the Future seeks to carry that torch further. If the first book was about enduring the shadow, this one is about living with the passage of time. About recognizing how we adapt, how we change, and how even as years move forward, the lessons of those who came before remain within us.
Dreams for Tomorrow
This new story is still unfolding. It may take months yet, or perhaps a year or more, before it is ready to stand on its own. But the pace doesn’t trouble me. Because Dreams of the Future is not simply about a destination; it is about the journey, about carrying the flame through changing seasons and remembering that time never truly steals from us what we choose to keep alive.
The torch of light and hope, of faith and resilience, is still burning. It has been passed down from those we’ve lost, and we carry it into the futures they can no longer see. That is what I want this story to remind us: that while time moves, we move with it; not away from those who came before, but forward with their lessons burning quietly inside us.
And maybe that is the truest definition of a dream for the future: not just an aspiration of what we will become, but a continuation of what has already been given.
- Stipe Lozina