Between Then & Now || Currently Editing for Wattys 2022

51.

At the end of the day, we all die.

We know that there will come a day when there is nothing–or, at least, there is no longer a here or a now. And we can sit here and debate and wonder and try as hard as we might to figure out what comes after it. But the truth is, there is no way for us to know–no way to be certain what comes after our eyes go dim and we can no longer communicate what we see. We can hardly predict the future–how are we possibly supposed to predict what comes after there is no future?

We can believe what we believe, but all that we know is what we know.

And what we know is now, here.

We know the laughter of small children running around parks, the occasional bark of a dog as the birds twitter in the tree branches. We know the feeling of falling in love for the first time, of getting our hearts broken for the first time. We know children asking for candy bars from parents who don't necessarily have the money but get them one anyway. We know nights sitting by fires, talking to people we met by chance but grow close to by choice.

And, as much as we might like to ignore them, we know the bad things, too.

We know that, as we sit in restaurants which throw out a metric ton of food every single day, there are children taking their last breath across the globe. We know those parents don't always have the means to get us everything we want but still would die just to give us even a little bite of the world. We know that, as we complain about the stupid, small fight we had with our mom over something that doesn't even matter, there are children lying awake at night wishing they could have a fight just like that one with their parents one 

last

time.

There's not much we do about the transience of our existence. At the end of the day, we all die. Kind of a fucked up game whatever divine energy created us came up with. But there's no changing it.

But we can always change how we look at it.

We can start viewing each day as an opportunity. To change this place, to leave the world better than we found it. To make it so that we can go to bed at night, our head hitting the pillow, knowing that there are no longer kids starving while 70,000 metric tons of food rot.

We can stop working those jobs we don't even like, faking smiles for people whose opinions we don't even care about, going to sleep with people we don't love anymore but stay with out of our fear of being lonely as if we aren't already. We can stop worrying about pretending like we all know what we're doing because the truth is no one has any fucking clue what they're doing.

And, when you realize that, really, everyone else is just as lost and stressed as you are, things don't seem so serious, anymore. Because life goes on. Even if you don't get that job. Even if you break up. Even if you have a quarter-life crisis, buy a travel van, and go on a cross-country road trip on a whim.

Life goes on.

And you don't have to know where it's going. Because you don't really get a choice where it takes you. You're going.