Flash Fiction With Reflections

Below is a piece of flash fiction with a explanation following. I think it could prove instructive to see all of the thought that went behind a 500 word story.

Life Is Beautiful

     Falling is about as close to flying as a human can ever get. Other than the final second, there is little difference. I can hear the air rushing through my ears, feel all of the sensation as it plays upon my skin. There is an intensity to it that I have never experienced before. Every single cell of me is alive, thrillingly, gloriously alive.

     It’s funny how extremity brings things into focus, slows the rapid flow of time to a near standstill. I appreciate now every scrap of life that has been given me, although scant moments ago life was something I was quite anxious to throw away. I realize now what a precious gift it is that was mine to do with as I chose. The simplest things fill my heart with the most exquisite joy: the endless waves lapping on the shore and the mysterious force that moves them forward. Birds spiral above me, fulfilling purposes I’ll never understand. I feel a kinship with them, feel a kinship with every living thing on earth. Even now I have time to ponder the mysteries of the universe. Funny how I lived a lifetime in darkness. Funny how I walked an endless path of routine.

     But now I experience life as it was meant to be experienced. The desire that I should be able to convey these ideas to the person I was a moment ago flits briefly through my mind until I let it go, realizing now there is no more time for regrets. What I could have or should have done is of little importance to me now. Every regret I have ever had flees from me like rats from a sinking ship.

     I have been given a gift. In the scant seconds since I decided to end my life, the beauty of life has been shown me. What damnation my decision headed me towards has been erased as I head towards my end. And I realize that whatever bad decisions we make are not the final answer. Life has always been short, been insufficient for all the things I wanted to do with it. It has always been about what to do with the time given to you. And in this final moment, I shall spend it glorifying what time I have left. My eyes take in all the beauty of the waters below me, the sun reflecting from a thousand facets the jewel that is the ocean. How far away now the darkness and despair that made me toss myself from the bridge above. It’s seems odd to say, but I was quite a different person back then. The seconds stretch in the intensity of my vitality.

      And for a moment I have experienced the miracle of life. Mysteries become obvious to me. The simple and the complex are aligned so that I see a grand order to existence. Answers appear that make my deepest questions seem quite absurd and small. The answers aren’t, never were, things you could find in a book. But now I—

I guess the first thing I want to point out is the enormity of time which seems to pass in what would actually be only a couple of seconds. It has been often mentioned that time tends to slow down when in a crisis situation. I’m thinking of the song Ballet of the Impact by Spock’s Beard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEx8wgqpcKE but I’m sure there are thousands of examples. Seneca said Life is long if you know how to use it. I guess the point I want to make is that we can spend vast amounts of our lives not really living, and so when we look back on those stretches, we remember little of them. But those precious moments we feel truly alive we recall in great detail. It is a matter of quality mattering more than quantity.

Another aspect to this story is the human tendency to become stuck in a negative thought process and the dramatic circumstances that are sometimes required to shake us out of them. Life IS at its roots a miracle, but we can be so involved in the overarching flow of our own lives that we forget that we are a part of something much larger and that just to be a part of it for an instant is an awesome thing.

Somewhat tied to the last topic and yet different is the idea of redemption. It is never too late to change the road you are on. Sometimes we feel that it is too late for us, but what we are really saying is we’ve wasted a lot of time. But the past is the past. That is no reason to throw away the present.

Again related to the prior topic, it does not pay worrying about where you are not. It is what you have and where you are at right now that you have an opportunity to appreciate.

I am getting to an age now where more of my life is behind me than in front of me. Time is becoming more precious to me, where I do not want to waste a scrap of it on those things that are of no value to me. I can imagine when I am old that I will realize the moments of my life are like a handful of sand, a finite amount. When I get to that point, I do not wish to be in a panic worrying about what to do with them or wishing I had more. I hope to be able to savor them, to truly feel the amazingness of what I have lived through.

I hope my little blog post was worth the time it took to read.

P.S. Another Seneca quote for you: “As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.”

What Meaning We Can Find, We Find In Our Hearts

I’m looking out at my very modest backyard as I write this. I see large trees in yards beyond mine, as well as the various plants and flowers that my wife carefully cultivates. It is fully summer now, and all that nature can impart to our little backyard it is providing.

My dog died three weeks ago tonight, just about this time. Some won’t appreciate the bond that humans can have with animals, so if that is you, you might want to move along. But death is death, it leaves the living asking the same questions.

I think of myself as a writer. Sometimes I think a writer cannot fully experience anything until he has written about it. I write about death, among other things. Mainly, I try to write about the meaning of life. I want life to have meaning, feel there MUST be meaning to it. But pretty ideas and philosophies are put to the test when the reality of death is put in front of us and we cannot ignore it.

There is so much I want to say regarding the recent passing of my dog Bella. It may sound as if I am speaking of personal matters, and I am, but I hope to find universal principles from my experience. When someone, or in my case something, who is very close to you dies, there are many thoughts and emotions that flood through a person. Part of it is loyalty: I would do anything for her. Love doesn’t end with the death of the loved one. But I realize there is nothing I can do for her. I could feel guilty, or miserable, but that would do nothing to help her. She is beyond anything I can do for her, and I’m not done loving her yet.

Part of it is pure selfishness on my part. Part of grieving is dealing with being the survivor. That’s when the guilt sets in, when I realize that my grief is as much about me as it is about her. My grief should be directed to her, not at my own feelings. But again, she is gone. Forever.

Forever. The word hits hard on such occasions. Life is about possibilities, it’s about “maybe if I try hard enough” or “well, not this time, but maybe next time”. Humans aren’t made for ruling things out with absolute certainty. We’re born to be optimists, to believe that we can have whatever we want if we are patient, hardworking and believe. So saying goodbye forever is not natural. Maybe humans just delude themselves, maybe it is only in times of loss that we allow ourselves to see the truth. That everything we love can and will be ripped from us in time. Time is a wheel that crushes all before it.

Death is also a milestone, when we look back at the time we’ve known  someone. Fourteen years is a pretty long time, no matter how old you are. As a matter of fact, fourteen years seem more precious to someone who is older. With fewer years to waste, each year becomes more precious. I look back at who I was when I first came home with a little puppy in a cardboard box, think of all the time we spent, of all that has changed in my life in that time. And I see in her passing the passing of all things. Life ticks by us in sections, and here was one big section that is gone forever. One more piece in my collection firmly filed in the past.

I try to write about meaning, but meaning tends to desert us when we experience loss. Meaning doesn’t MEAN anything sometimes, it is an abstract notion that matters little compared to the very tangible losses we experience.

In the end, meaning is not an intellectual but an experiential thing. Reality is too large for us to grasp with our mind. It is only the heart that can truly understand the really big issues of life. I remember being a man in my twenties, visiting an aunt who was dying. I spent the night with another aunt, who was then in her eighties. We spent a good amount of time discussing the meaning of life. She was a good, intelligent woman, but she was about to lose her little sister. She didn’t have any more answers than I did.

Old age will not permit us to understand life and death anymore than youth can. But if a person lives life openly, he will know how it feels. If you leave yourself open to love, pain, and loss, that is as close as you will get to understanding. Do not hide yourself from such things by constructing philosophies or beliefs that seek to explain away what you feel. Feel and do not turn away from the feeling. Embrace whatever feeling you experience, because it as much as anything else is real. Feel, and the experience of it will give you whatever wisdom and understanding is granted to humans.

Shortly before I started writing this, I looked in my backyard and noticed a chipmunk feeding from the hummingbird feeder my wife has by the porch. A few moments later, I looked out the back window to notice a baby bunny sitting in the grass, as well as a bunch of birds bouncing around. I  soon returned to my seat just in time to see a cardinal alighting on our fence. With the myriad flowers, the world truly seemed alive. And it was all in my little backyard, the place that my dog Bella reigned over for over fourteen years. There was something about the abundance of life that was occurring that touched a place in my heart. And I understood. I’m sure it sounds silly to you, but I understood.