“If they would just let me back in the house then we wouldn’t have this problem!” he said to no one in particular as he paced through the park.
“I’m trying to improve my ability to play the drums. Once I do that, I’ll be in a famous rock band, and then I’ll have money, and then I can pay them back. So yes, the drumming might be loud, but it’s a win-win for everyone.”
He scrolled through Craigslist on his iPhone 5 looking for new roommates.
“This time it’ll be different. I just need to find someone who will let me play my drums!”
No matter what was said to her, she took it the wrong way. It was an attack. Bad intent. Potentially evil.
Her coworker would say, “Good morning!”, and she’d report her to HR.
Life itself was literally an assault on her emotionally and physically.
So like all creatures, she learned to adapt. To always fight back. To always deflect. To never let anyone or anything in.
She was hard, on the inside and out.
She spent every moment in “fight or flight” to the point that there was nothing left to fight or flight. Everyone and everything had left her.
“I thought you loved grapes?”
“What? I’ve never liked grapes or said I liked grapes.”
“You used to eat grapes all the time when we first met. Look at this photo.”
He slid over his phone, and it showed a picture of her relaxing in the beach next to a bowl of grapes. She was even eating a grape in the photo.
“What? That’s so weird. I remember that trip and photo distinctly, but I have zero memory of grapes being consumed.”
She began to doubt herself. This was the fifth time in the last week he had said or showed her something that made her question her sense of reality.
It was a fall night. Brisk, but perfect. With a jacket on, you could be outside for hours.
All the kids in the neighborhood knew the drill. Once the sun came down, and it was truly dark, everyone gathered outside the Furst’s house.
The driveway was lit-up, and that kept the front yard decently visible to. The backyard had even more lights on, so if you viewed the house from above, you could easily view the whole 360 degree perimeter around the home.
It was always the same - a long debate about what game to play. Everyone had an opinion, and nobody would just go with the flow, so it took “forever” to get started. Eventually somebody got mad and bored enough and started shouting “we’re playing capture the flag or I’m going home now!”
The house was divided into two sides with flags hidden in each end. Each team was given 100 seconds to hide their flag before the other team could cross the boundary into enemy territory.
After the loud 100 second count-down, he shouted, “your time is up. Better run!”
You don’t have to be alive. This is true.
Tomorrow, you could wake-up, and choose to end it.
Never forget this.
Because this is not depressing, but instead freeing.
You’re choosing to be alive. You’re choosing to be here.
So if you are going to be here, why not enjoy it? Why not make the most of it?
But what does it mean to then enjoy it? To make the most of it?
You must first reject indulgence. Short term pleasures are just that - short term. And the more you indulge, the more it becomes a habit, and this habit will ultimately make you miserable.
So if you reject indulgence, what do you replace it with?
You will yourself to be enthusiastic about everything. Act as if, and at some point you’ll no longer be acting.
And be enthusiastic about what? Enthusiastic about doing the right thing.
And what is the right thing? To live with gratitude and treat others with love, empathy, and engagement.
He put down his pen and took a long sigh.
“Okay, now what?” he asked out loud.
His wife was shaking her head from the kitchen.
“He’s actually lost his mind. How did this happen?”
He continued: “How do I get this message out to the world?”
It all started 7 months back. He took a trip to Peru to try an ancient psychedelic that virtually no one had heard of. It was a small blue powder that was thrown aggressively into a person’s face while they breathed-in heavily.
What happened next completely changed him - not just for one night, but forever. He now saw and spoke to spirits everywhere he went. They were as real as anything else, and they were guiding him through life.
He couldn’t believe his eyes.
“You are the chosen one,” it said on the screen.
At 12 years old, the town elder came and took a sample of your blood.
This sample was then fed into a complex supercomputer that analyzed 46 trillion datapoints. Based on these datapoints, it determines your life path.
“How can I be the chosen one? There’s nothing interesting about me,” he thought to himself.
Ancient tradition held that at some point the “chosen one” would be found. Scientists and researchers had spent over 7000 years analyzing and decrypting ancient texts to understand how the “chosen one” would be identified.
And here he is.
She scrolled through her memories.
“Where the hell is it?” She thought.
She knew she had 276 memories in this folder. The memory of that was stored in a different folder on her Google Drice.
But there were only 275 memories. And these weren’t just any memories - these were “sacred.”
The folder was even labeled as such: “Shannon’s Sacred Scenes.”
Her stomach was in a knot. She knew a sacred memory was gone, but she didn’t know how, and she literally didn’t know what it was about.
“Fuck. Why did I use my biometrics at the gas station? I knew that place was shady as hell.”
He rummaged through the plastic water bottles by the beach.
“Shit, they’re all empty.”
He filled the bong with lake water.
“This’ll probably kill us, but who cares.”
He lit the end of a small rope that he then used to light the weed on top of the bong. This rope “protected him from butane poisoning.”
He inhaled for 15 seconds before clearing. This was not his first rodeo.
As he exhaled the smoke, he began to cough. And cough. And cough.
His friends were laughing.
“What the fuck Timmy? Have you never smoked weed before?”
And he kept coughing. And then wheezing. And then slipping into some sort of asthmatic attack even though he didn’t have asthma.
Like everyday after school, she immediately raced home to get on AOL Instant Messenger.
“He hasn’t messaged me yet?” she whispered to herself.
She knew he was online, but he still hadn’t acknowledged her.
“John……………” she typed.
“hey”
“Hey you!”
Five minutes passed and radio silence from John.
“JOHN!”
Silence.
“JOHN…………….!”
Silence.
“John! how can u just ignore me? don’t u know how much I love you? we have something special John!”
“I love u John. LOVE. and I’m not afraid to say it!”
Five minutes more passed.
“OK” messaged John.
“OK!? OK!? wat the hell is that? that’s it?”
