There Is No Free Pass

The thing you must come to grips with very quickly is the fact that your life is ending doesn't mean everyone else's is too. Events keep happening - life happens - milestones come and go and plans made for the future. Line-ups don't get shorter, bills arrive and no one gives you a pass that says because you don't feel particularly well your clothes will hoist themselves into the washing machine. People still say and do stupid things - and you do too - you don't become automatically wiser, more sensitive, more knowing. Your sense of urgency not necessarily shared by anyone else - your search for meaning not necessarily relevant to anyone around you. You still stumble along - expecting everything and everyone to be different - but it isn't and they aren't - can't be - we aren't built that way - life doesn't move that way. You are not alone - but in many ways you are - the only one on this particular journey in your house...perhaps on your street. But you are not unique - far from it - other struggles - other journeys even more perilous than your own. And life won't stop long enough for you to stay there - fully absorb someone else's story because it is too much - after your sympathy is the long slow ride - the hours - the days - the ticking clock - the part of the road that you walk alone - no sun glinting in your eyes - the crisp air all around you. It is how it has to be - this passing that occurs whether you will it to be or dread its arrival. The movement all around you and the fear of standing still.