Messi and the Passage of Time

By FARHA GUERRERO I am awoken early this morning, as I often am, around 4 a.m.—what I have known for a long time as the magic hour. I hear words immediately upon awakening, words waiting to be written, and it is a reminder that I am a writer. Today my words turn to the memory of a man who many of us simply call Messi, a household name known by every lover of football. A man who plays the game in a way that we know we may never witness again. The passage of time is key in these early morning thoughts, just as it was four years ago when I wrote a small piece called Argentina gana el Mundial — Argentina Wins the World Cup. It was a reflection on how one can imagine one’s life in between World Cups, a life divided into four-year intervals. When one makes that simple calculation, I reflected, one immediately realizes that there are not that many World Cups in one’s lifetime. That number suddenly becomes small, and one feels that the passage of time is equally short. What, too, happens, I…