Something You Learned This Year

I wrote this piece during a five-minute exercise in The Writing Studio. The prompt – write about a lesson learned this year by blending three writing styles. My styles: slang, ecstatic, surreal.

We must use our time better, yes we MUST, oh how we must. It's the highest stakes game, the ultimate winner-take-all, the ol' UWTA, yes the UWTA. My God, and people don't know! They think it's a game of patty cake with the nieces and nephews, have some fun, give it a shot, no big deal. Right? No!

No, no, a thousand times no. This is our lives, we have such a limited slice, one slim sliver amidst to crushing bricks of nothingness that press in always, never ceasing, always looming, then one day in the next few dozen years (or days, or months, who knows) it all goes CRACK and that's IT! Imagine! That's all we get, and then we're gone, and we're gone forever, nothing more, for trillions and trillions of years, then still trillions more. Think of the Exurbia video, we think we get another shot and then three blinks and it's gone, this whirl of life circles the drain and then we're left with nothing.

But not today! Today we still have time, life's most precious gift, this thing we should cradle in our arms with heartfelt intensity. On this moment hangs eternity. And the next one, and the next. Seize it! What else do we have?! Grab the cup of life and gulp like a parched man in the desert. Be glad that the water still flows today!