Woke up early this morning. Really early. Everything was quiet. It was still dark.
I’m not sure why, but I’ve been having trouble sleeping these past few weeks. Could be the weather, could be something else - after all, they say dogs can sense danger. That snakes made it out of Pompeii before Vesuvius blew. That elephants knew to flee to higher ground ahead of the tsunami that swept over Sri Lanka. Maybe my nightly wrestling match with my bedsheets is a sign of an impending massive southern Californian earthquake? Or maybe it signals the approach of something worse, slouching towards Bethlehem to be born: The Holidays. After all, we’re firmly in that time of year when all of us are held captive by our crazy families - so if the worst thing that happens in the next few weeks is that the ground shakes and a couple of buildings fall down and crush me into a thick red paste, I’m fine with it.
Woke up and stumbled to the bathroom, where I caught the sunrise through the screen of my bathroom window. My god. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the sun rise. I stood there and thought “Motherfucker. This is something that happens every morning and I sleep right through it.” I stood there - next to my toilet, my feet cold on the tile floor - and watched the light grow brighter until my eyes watered. Or maybe I was crying? (See above, Re: The Holidays - aka “The Time When Childhood Memories Resurface and Make Paste of Us All”) The tears could’ve also been the result of some sort of bathroom mold situation. Sidenote: I think my bathroom has some sort of mold situation.
Social media has made going home for the holidays a little surreal. There used to be a sense of loss when you grew up and lost contact - losing a phone number, not calling enough, moving away; all of these things could kill a friendship. There was always a sense of manic desperation underlying every Big Life Change or Cosmic Chapter Marker that made me want to cling to my friends like the flotsam in the wake of a sinking ship. Those ties to the past all seemed so fragile, like they could drift away at any moment.
Now however, I’m Facebook Friends with all those people.
We live in a time of miracles: right now I could click a link, push a few buttons, and it would instantly reopen a portal of communication between myself and a voice from the past: The girl who I took to Homecoming and never talked to again because I was embarrassed; the other girl who I sat next to senior year and wrote love notes to that I never delivered; the other other girl who I drew comic books with every single day in sixth grade after school and who eventually went to jail in college for trying to shoplift baseball cards by stuffing them in a comforter; all of these people and more, I could talk to right now. Today.
I don’t click those links and push those buttons. And somehow, choosing to not communicate feels worse than losing touch with them - because I have the choice. The silence is no longer the result of a Big Life Change, it’s an act I commit. Endlessly. So what’s the bigger tragedy: Me never seeing someone again, or seeing someone regularly on my “news feed” and staying silent? Is it worse to let a friend slip away or to sit in a virtual room with them and purposely never speak?
Sidenote: The other day I was reading about people who’ve been sentenced to death.
If you do something truly terrible — and get caught, of course — you get sentenced to death and put on death row. That sounds bad, until you realize the average American incarceratee (a word I just made up) spends 16 and a half years on death row before they’re executed — in fact, some actually die of old age. Since American prisoners spend so much time appealing the process, they can push off the date of their execution for decades - so even though their execution date inches forward day by day, it sounds from all accounts I’ve read that the worst thing about being on death row is the boredom.
In Japan however, death row is a little different: The prisoners aren’t told the date of their execution.
They wake up every day wondering if that’s the day they’ll die.
Now I know that the people on death row have all done some bad shit, but that feels a bit too close to cruel & unusual punishment to play with them like that. These bastards wake up every day and wonder if that’s their last day. Every single day. What do they do with themselves? How do they deal with that kind of weight over their heads, day in and day out?
Then I realized that the prisoners on Japan’s death row and I have something in common: I don’t know if today’s the day I’ll die, either.
As I stood there in my bathroom, the cold tile slowly turning my feet to ice, having been woken by some feeling or reason I’ll never know, I thought of all the people I used to know and now only know about. I thought about those behind bars who were falling asleep with relief that they had survived another day. I thought about the daily miracle that was the beauty of the newborn sun turning the sky pink and gold before my eyes. How could I sleep through this every day? How could I not be living every day like it might be my last? How could I let all those friendships slip away through my fingers like they were nothing?
Here’s how: Because what makes life great is not more of everything; what makes life great is the unexpected joy. The Memento Mori. The bonds that are deep, not the bonds that are many. Meaning comes from the finite, not the endless; who cares more about a dollar - the millionaire or the beggar?
Just because the sun rises every day doesn’t mean that I should see it that often; how can the majestic not become banal with routine? If I lived every day with the thought that it could be my last, how could I ever have hope for the future? If I became best friends with everyone on Facebook, how long could I talk to them about their boring ass marriages and stupid fucking kids before I shoved knitting needles into my eyes? (Answer: About twenty minutes. Tops.)
The beauty of a sunrise is in the fact that it only lasts for a short time - and that same beauty is in every person we come into contact with, in every relationship we have. Sometimes, it’s better to remember people as they were than see them how they are. Memory is a gift, but so is forgetfulness.
The reminder of the sunrise; the reminder of that life is fleeting; the reminder that those we’ve loved still live; these little reminders are more powerful and life-changing than the great miracles we live with every day: these reminders can become inspiration.
So, even though it was absurdly early for me to start my day, I turned on the light and turned on the shower - and as I took one last look out the window at the last few moments of the sunrise, I thought about a man who watched this same sun paint the same sky in the same colors many years ago; he had no social media to contend with, no death row to think about. But yet, I’m sure he had the same fear of time running out. The same worries of losing touch, the same fear of dying, the same want to see the sun each day and to experience everything and anything the world had to offer. His name was Virgil, and he put it better than I ever could:
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