Live Like You're Dying

It’s funny how often we see interviews and quotes and movies and books about living each day like your last… And not one of us will do so until our deaths are staring us in the face.

“I’ll just get through this year, then I’ll start following my dreams…”

“I’ll finish school and then I’ll live like there’s no tomorrow…”

“I’ll help my friends get through this and then I’ll start living for myself…”

Bull. Shit.

Get up. Get out. Live your own damn life.

One day, your life will flash before your eyes. Will it be worth watching?

-Lucifer

Dreaming of Stars

I think clearest in the middle of the night.
There is no pressure. No one to tell me what to do, or what not to do. Nobody to contradict me or put me down or hurt me. Not a soul to limit my imagination or reign in my dreams, lest I be carried away by the possibilities of something others could not fathom, or never dared to.
There is something comforting about the stars. The sun, so gaudy and bright and overwhelming, seems so blinding and unyielding in comparison with the soft twinkle of light that is millions of years old.
I am most confident in the middle of the night.
My goals and my dreams lay spread out around me, each visible and tangible and real, if only just out of my reach. No one to snatch them from the canvas of my mind, to pull them apart and toss them at the feet of practicality.
I love the night.
The only danger is that of the impending dawn, where light casts doubt on all of my best laid plans, where others are awake and opinionated and all too ready to drag me down from the heavens.
There is no stopping the onslaught of day. The sun of everyday life and nine-to-five jobs will shove its way into the scene, obliterating the stars and my dreams along with them.
But every night, the stars return. Every night, they slowly and cautiously take the stage before the cosmos and dare to wheel and dance across the sky, shining resolutely into the curtains of black.
Dare I join them?

By the Numbers

Today, I had the strangest epiphany. I have lost myself. Today, I looked at the reading assignments, and the homework assignments, and the writing assignments. And at the top of everything I turn into my TAs, that may or may not be seen by my professor, I write my student identification number. That nine digit code, consisting of an A followed by a random conglomeration of eight numbers, that is my identifier. And as I stared at this code, I realized that I am no more than a number to a lot of people.
Even as I type this and go to post it to the world, such as it is, I am still just a number. The 78th follower on Tumblr. The 452nd friend on Facebook. My fire and my opinions lose their potency as they are reduced to size 12 Arial font, homogenizing my thoughts and feelings with others’ announcements of what they had for lunch.
We can blame the digital age all we want for the lack of intimacy in our relationships. But what it gets right down to is people. The internet makes it easy and so we become lazy. Why drive all the way to a friend’s house to surprise them when you can just Skype? Why take long walks on trails through the woods, talking about anything and everything, when you can just Facebook chat? We are losing our ability to relate to each other through anything besides text abbreviations and emoticons.
Despite the slight hypocrisy of posting this almost anti-technology rant, I encourage you, if you actually read this far, to do your best to reconnect with the people you know on a face-to-face basis. Remind yourself who that person is every time you get a text from them, or a message. Remember what they look like, how they talk, their quirks and virtues. Reacquaint with the world through your own eyes, rather than a computer screen.
-Lucifer