[please note: this post was originally written in July 2010; I hid it from the blog feed some time ago, but I decided it was worth re-posting … ’cause it’s no less true than it was when I wrote it two years ago]
… well, actually, it has been a week. But no need to quibble over minor details like that.
In the last week, I’ve done an awful lot of thinking about time, and about my basic philosophy on how I want to live my life. The thing is, I so understand the virtues of patience; anticipation is an incredibly potent force, absence DOES make the heart grow fonder, and allowing things to unfold over time is often a very logical, sensical, and wise move.
Yes! Yes! I understand and even logically agree with those thoughts… I genuinely do.
But fundamentally, this is NOT how I choose to live my life. I could give you a lengthy explanation why — perhaps, in fact, that would be cathartic for me and educational for those who might read this — but the bottom line is that I have an acute, perhaps TOO acute, sense of my own mortality. When someone says to me, “We have all the time in the world,” my knee-jerk reaction is the impulse to scream, loudly, “YOU DON’T KNOW THAT!” Intellectually, rationally, statistically — yes. The chances of world-ending apocalypse or tragic life-ending (or life-changing) happenstance are vanishingly close to zero. But that doesn’t mean we should take tomorrow for granted.
Perhaps people who want to take for granted that we’ll still be around tomorrow have never experienced abrupt loss in their life … I’m not talking about rejection or relationship demise, but genuine, permanent loss of life. I have. I had a close friend stolen away from me one cool morning in high school, as she was just going about her daily routine, driving to school. Her car slipped off the shoulder just enough to cause her to jerk the wheel back, and that sent her car into a swerve that ultimately ended with her and her sister dying on the side of the road. Nobody expected it. Nobody could have possibly seen it coming. In the blink of an eye, two teenage lives — full, promising, important lives — were taken away from us. Can anyone possibly understand how powerful a life lesson that is for a 16-year-old girl to learn?
I’ve had too many poignant moments like that in my own life to take tomorrow for granted, either. There’s a reason I tell people in my life how I feel about them, that I do what I can to let those who are close to me know they can count on me for anything. There’s a reason I express gratitude and love and affection so freely, even when I’m not certain it will be reciprocated or appreciated. I never, ever, ever want to have my life stolen away (or someone else stolen from me) and ever worry that, post-tragedy, anyone will wonder how I felt about them.
Life is so fucking short. Too short. Every single day matters, every moment of every day is an opportunity to do something meaningful and worthwhile and important. There’s a reason I have dedicated my life to the things I have; I want to make a difference, and when I do die, I want people to look back over my life and know that I spent my time on things that mattered and wasted precious little on stupid shit. My goal, every day, is to suck the marrow out of life, to live with appreciation for the moments I am allowed to experience, to live without taking for granted that those moments will still be there tomorrow. This is how I live, how I actively choose to live, and I will not ever change. If anything, as I get older, I am more and more acutely aware of how fleeting life is.
I’m not trying to send a message here; really, I’m just trying to express these thoughts that have been rattling around in my head for the last week, to give them life outside myself and, in so doing, hopefully release myself from the quiet torture that has been keeping them within.
So I’ll close with some lyrics from a Garth Brooks song that often gets played during road trips (and certainly did last weekend), and that really speaks to this whole life-philosophy of mine. I hope it speaks to you the way it does to me. There’s no question which “those” I am in this little dichotomy. 🙂
We call them strong, those who can face this world alone,
Who seem to get by on their own,
Those who will never take the fall.We call them weak, who are unable to resist,
The slightest chance love might exist,
And for that forsake it all.
They’re so hell-bent on giving, walking a wire,
Convinced it’s not living if you stand outside the fire.
…
Life is not trite, it is merely surviving,
If you’re standing outside the fire.There’s this love that is burning deep in my soul,
Constantly yearning to get out of control,
Wanting to fly, higher and higher,
I can’t abide standing outside the fire.