I have a friend who just — wait, I should explain — it’s 5:30AM and I’m in a restaurant at Stansted airport, four hours sleep, mind is moving like cool molasses.
So yes — a friend, I was saying — just wound up in the hospital. Long story, a string of gibberish texts, a strange phone call, it was obvious his head wasn’t right. After a concerted effort by a text-connected circle of concerned friends, well, it doesn’t matter. What matters is, not a stroke, probably cancer. Brain.
When someone dies it reminds us to embrace life, time is short, so hug the ones you love. Reminds us what matters, and that 90% of what distracts us — worry, regret, vanity — doesn’t.
We know that ritual. We’ve all thought and uttered the platitudes.
(Time passes, now in seat 10D, idle at the gate. No AC on yet. UK heat wave. A rabid soccer fan, by the read of his tattoos, is passed out next to me, within eight minutes of boarding. Big game yesterday. Spurs avoid relegation. Up ahead, the flight attendant is positively glowing, perspiring in a magical sheen, so much more elegant than the crude droplets dotting my brow.)
Odds are pretty high we’ll all go one day. This current situation is another mindfuck altogether. Reckoning with a person altered. From chatting, arguing, normal everyday stuff, to stuttering, blank stares, wistfulness.
Still alive though. Who knows how it’ll turn out. In the meantime, we figure out how to show up, to determine what he needs — shower gel, slippers, shaving accoutrements — and how to just sit with someone who lost something precious in the blink of a few eyes.
Shit can change so fast. And so what?
I still sit here with a nagging worry about my 90% (how long are we gonna sit here, can’t they turn on the AC, what’s in this sausage) and come to think of it, I can’t find the other 10%. The stuff that justifies the worry, that steals me rightfully from the present moment.
(I’m the look-ahead sort. How am I going to manage this tight spot or that one. I’m pretty sure that’s a tight spot up ahead. How will I get through that one?
Same way you always do, Lad. Same way.
And so on.)
Here’s the riddle at the heart of it: how many nudges does it take? Why doesn’t each one erase a bit of that senseless preoccupation? Permanently?
The way I see it, each mortal illness and death should be good for a 10% flush. Of course, for a little while, it seems like much more — 80, maybe 90% — I’m going to change how I live, each day is precious, all that. The aforementioned platitudes. But we know how that goes. First email from the asshole client and whoosh, rogue wave hits your precious new sandcastle.
(Sleeping dude has moved into a fierce snuggle along my right flank, slumped over so far his earbud popped out and rolled a full row forward.)
So yeah, the riddle — if every jolt was worth 10% permanence, shouldn’t eight or nine of these goddamn existential shocks be enough to set me straight? To put all of that static out of my head once and for all? Lord only knows what happens when you leave that stuff trapped up there. Well, lord and Gábor, I suppose.
Love you all,
Chip
