Life: What a Deadly Thing
Every morning, the most fortunate of us wake up to the sound of a deafening alarm and start the normal daily routine. You cut the alarm off and get mad because you wish you were still asleep. After getting over the first of your daily tantrums, you get up and mope to the shower. As you hop in the shower, warm water heats your body up, the initial tingling sensation of the water gliding off your skin. As your skin warms up so does your mind, and your thoughts start to pop up in your head like lightning bugs on a summer night. Then your mind is completely warm and those lightning bugs turn to gnats. Once the comfort of the shower turns into something unbearable, you hop out, dry off and get dressed. After brushing your teeth and maybe getting breakfast, you get your stuff and you start your journey to school.
Along the way, you listen to songs that get you ready for your “amazing day!” You see the school sign and have another one of your daily tantrums because just the sign reminds you how much you don’t want to be at school. As you walk through the halls you see all these “same ole same ole” faces. The girl with the pretty eyes. The boy who has the best style you’ve ever seen. And that one funny person that always manages to put a smile on your face. Despite how much you notice, admire, and appreciate these people, you don’t say anything to them. You don’t tell the girl her eyes are pretty. You don’t tell the boy you like the way he dresses. You don’t tell that funny person how funny they are and to keep being themselves. But why? Because “there’s always tomorrow.”
After school, you head home. You’re just glad that the day is over. When you walk in the house, your mom greets you lovingly and asks how your day was. You respond half-heartedly with a “good,” get a snack and proceed to go to your room to start your afternoon activities. Your response causes your mom to give the face of expected disappointment; another day has gone by and you still won’t engage in a conversation with her. She expects you to give this response but she still asks hoping one day you will actually tell her about your day, maybe tomorrow. You see the face but you still don’t talk to her. It's not because you don’t love her or appreciate her, you know you do. It's just because today you don’t have time, like every day before. After your afternoon activities, you wind down and go to bed. As you get into bed, you’re happy to go to sleep but mad because tomorrow you have to start the same routine over again; you wish you could sleep forever.
Imagine the next day somebody’s wish came true. They get to sleep forever. They didn’t really mean it but they got their wish. It could be anybody, from the class clown that you are used to seeing every day to your mom who you have known for your entire seventeen years of life. You didn’t know this was going to happen. If you knew that today was going to be the well-dressed boy’s last day, you would have talked to him. You would have told him that he was by far the best-dressed person you’ve ever seen. But you didn’t know, so you didn’t tell him. You thought there was always going to be tomorrow because that's life, right? Wrong. In life, there isn’t always a tomorrow. We have made it so far in our lives that it causes us to think that the next day is promised. But it's not. That's the deadly thing about life; it can be gone without warning.
What if today is the last day to tell somebody what is on your mind? Tell them. The worst thoughts are the unsaid and unheard ones. Once somebody is gone you will never be able to speak to them again. The possible embarrassment that you can face is a speck of dust compared to the amount of pain you will face knowing that you had something to say but didn’t say it because you really thought “there’s always tomorrow.”