How to Live Before You Die

I saw a post on Tumblr (damn, you know you’re in for a treat now).

Actually, a post on Tumblr saw me. Saw right into me, pressed its face up against the finger-smudged glass window straight into my soul and beckoned me over. It was a post that described somebody’s view about their impact on this world:

“I used to think that I had no impact on the world at all and then one day I was literally folding a shirt and I looked down at the shirt I just folded and was like ‘Wait a minute. That shirt wasn’t folded before I folded it. That is a tangible thing that I did.”

And then moments later, it arrived at this conclusion:

“The heat death of the universe is coming, dude. In that context me and Aristotle both basically don’t exist.”

I know. We don’t deserve Tumblr.

I adore this. Why? Because this post had quite literally popped by to tell me that death is coming, but life is happening. One is soon, but the other is now. Make an impact while you can.

And impacts don’t need to be immense

They can be folded up shirts and kisses in the center of a palm. A sharpened pencil and a drawing pinned to the fridge. A coaster brought back from Greece, and a snail rescued from the middle of the road. We have the power to step outside right now and post a tenner through our neighbor’s letterbox. To pat a horse. To adopt a child. To study microbiology. We can ask for that boy’s number or compliment that girl’s smile. That Twitter thread of bagels that look like planets wouldn’t exist if you hadn’t shared it. That cauliflower cheese would have been nothing more than rotting ingredients had you decided not to use them. Your life would not be a life if you chose not to live it.

Don’t you see the impact of that?

That folded shirt might be the reason your daughter isn’t late to her big meeting, because she’d forgotten to iron one the night before. That kiss might linger in your boyfriend’s hand, making him feel much less lonely while you’re on your night shift. You might have never sketched that blueprint if the pencil wasn’t sharp and ready to use.

The drawing on the fridge keeps you smiling when your kid is at her dads. The coaster, a reminder of the best holiday of your life. The snail a life you saved. The child’s too. The tenner put towards another month of your u rent. The horse now slightly less nervous of human beings. The microbiology degree the reason an entirely new species has been discovered.

The boy’s number now saved in your phone as “husband”. The girl’s smile now a direct result of your kindness. That bagel business having the most lucrative month of their life because of your social media advocacy. That cheesy cauliflower dinner enough to stop your sister crying about her heartbreak for seventeen minutes.

That life of yours — the reason that so many others are better, simply because you’re in it. Don’t you see the impact of that?

And lifetimes don’t need to be long

Because they’re not, not really, not in the context of the entire cosmos. We are ephemeral entities, we exist, and then we end. That’s not a bad thing. That’s a life thing.

The end is coming. So don’t sweat the small stuff.

So what if you folded the shirt crookedly, and now there’s a crease along the shoulder? Who cares if you left a sticky lip-gloss mark in the palm of his hand? It doesn’t matter that the pencil you sharpened snapped or that the drawing fell off the fridge and slipped beneath it. So the coaster cracked on the flight home, and the snail found its way back onto the road. It’s okay that your neighbor spent the £10 on cigarettes and that the horse tried to nip your fingertips.

Maybe the child you adopted cries a lot at first. And you find out you’re not that into microbiology after all. Perhaps the boy didn’t give you his number, and the girl ignored you when you complimented her smile. Don’t worry that nobody liked your tweet or about the burned cauliflower piled up on your plate. Don’t worry about those days in your life when things go wrong, go nowhere, go stale.

Don’t worry about a thing because it’s all going to end one day anyway.

We’re not here to live in the best way possible, all the damn time. We’re here to live in our way — the only way possible — within every moment that we can. And we can. Oh man, we can.

That Tumblr post then ended with this:

“Your ideas about this boil down to whether you want to let your despair drag you down or if you want to punch your despair in the face the same way you could punch a tomato and explode it.”

So. Punch the tomato. Live your life. That’s all I ask.

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Oh hey, whilst you’re here: why not put the “em” into your “emails” and lob your name onto my mailing list for weekly em-bellishments on my rose-tinted, crumb-coated lens of life. It’s the equivalent of the reduced section in the supermarket (low value Weird Crap™ that you didn’t know you needed).