I was immortal once. I remember it well. I feared nothing because I couldn’t be killed. I ne er for a minute expected to suffer harm. But the most wonderful benefit of my immortal days was that I had time. The line of my life was like a highway that stretched out before me, no end in sight.
I started out driving down that road in a tiny red Maserati, which after a quarter-million miles is looking pretty dinged-up and the engine light is on. But that’s not the point. What’s changed is the road. In fact, it’s beginning to dawn on me that my entire metaphor is wrong. It’s not how long you have, it’s what you do with whatever time you have.
A few years ago, I wrote about my late friend Cher, whose entire life was a work of art. Cher was a fine artist, a painter. But everything she did – making a pie, sewing a dress, growing a garden, even cleaning the house – was done with as much care, eye for detail, and even reverence, as were her paintings. I still think about her with awe and a little envy. She approached life in a way that I’ve often wished I could. She didn’t wish that things could be other than they were. She wasn’t moving toward a goal. Nor did she think she had plenty of time to fool around before she lived an authentic life.
That “seize the day” philosophy is what motivated me to finally take the leap and write stories. I love being a novelist, even though I don’t love all the stuff that goes with it. Being a writer can be glorious, but sometimes it’s painful, too. It isn’t what I expected. In fact, I’ve achieved a bunch of life goals, and none of them has turned out to be what I expected. Every one is much worse in some ways, and infinitely better in others.
I’m not driving anywhere and there is no road. My new metaphor is that life is a wildfire, and we’re all standing right in the middle of it with no way out. It’s overwhelming heat and light, it has no shape or substance. It’s scary as hell. It consumes everything in an unstoppable rush and roar, and eventually consumes even itself. You just know this isn’t going to end well for you, and it’s going to be painful to boot. But it’s still endlessly fascinating and incredibly beautiful, even as it burns.
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