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Keshav Tayal
in the trenches • 22d
tick tock. tick tock. hear the clock? another now has just gone by. Film director Kevin Smith tells a story of his father who lived his life playing by the rules: "My father was a good guy. Not many good men in the world, but this was a good guy. He worked at a post office, canceling your stamps - what a soul-killing, horrible job that is - for years, just to pay for a family. Who knew if he had dreams?... I get a phone call at 6am from my brother. He tells me to get down to the hospital on Walnut Street… I get to the emergency room, open the door, and the first thing I see is my mother, who looks more scared than I've ever seen a human being in my life. There was terror on her face. I've seen my mother cry in my lifetime…This was different. This was like terror, fear, almost like there was a gun to her head. I looked to my brother, and he just had this expression where he gave me the slow nod, which meant my father was gone. Then my brother says something that probably defined my life: "He died screaming." I couldn't believe it. I asked if it was a figure of speech, and he said no, he literally died screaming. You could see my brother was haunted by it. My father wasn't a soft man by any stretch of the imagination, and I'd never heard him get really loud. The notion of my father dying screaming changed my life. I realized that even a good man in this world, who played the game straight, played by the rules, did everything he was supposed to do, could end up dying screaming. At that point, I decided there's no point in not trying to accomplish every stupid dream I've got, even if it's dumb stuff…. Chase it all and do it all because we're all going to die screaming, and you might as well enjoy it here." you have a finite number of nows. this is the only time you have which truly exists. the past is just a shadow, the future a mirage. there's not even a guarantee you won't die screaming. there's only now. this breath. this moment of awareness. the most dangerous lie we tell ourselves is that there will be time later. but later isn't promised. now is all we have. tick tock. tick tock.
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