On Why We Should Live as if We Only Have Five Years Left

"I don't know how to help them."

"I don't know how to help them."

He was stammering and he kept repeating himself. I looked down at his feet while he shifted weight from one to the other. There were wide spaces between his teeth and his face, youthful, was betrayed only by the lines of fear etched across his forehead.

He kept saying it, but his body seemed to reject the words falling chunky from his mouth. I sensed, hidden in his frustration, he had spent many nights awake wishing he could have helped.

It had been a strange day. I was standing before an ex-marine and I was admittedly frightened. We (the old punk and I) were pacing on the corner of Logan and 13th, canvassing for donations for a human rights organization, when the young man had swung from his bike.

Within the first few moments of my pitch, he was getting anxious. And then he was interrupting me.

"I was over there you know. In Afghanistan, not in Yemen. But you can't train a marine to be a humanitarian. I remember I was throwing candy into a group of 'em and they—they just destroyed themselves over it, ya know?"

The old punk was looking over at me. I didn't know, but I didn't want to ask either. And that was when I forgot the rest of my pitch. That was when I realized I was looking into the eyes of someone that had witnessed more darkness, more human suffering than anyone should ever bear witness to. He seemed familiar. He was the collected fragments of a story that has been told a million times: The broken soldier; the broken human.

And when he left, after thanking us for listening to him, he left a heavy dark shadow over everything.

"I think we're due for a break."

I nodded and was already sparking up a butt with shaking pink hands.

The shadow remained an unwanted guest as we were then moved to a different turf. Something unsavory and ominous was dangling in the clouds, in the corners of the high blue skies, and in the wings of the fat geese riding over head.

The day had begun strange. We had been given a presentation during our morning meeting. It was on the visible effects of global warming, of what was to come and of what we could do as individuals to try to curb our impact. A running script of the details remained in my mind for the rest of the day.

"Sea levels rising... coastal property destroyed... sinking islands... India will be unlivable by... studies show climate in Denver has become drier due to oil fracking... California's fire season is now continuous... death toll... polar vortex... increase in strong hurricanes... death toll..."

It had ended with an image of plastic bottles bobbing in the ocean like sick little sail boats.

On turf, I closed my eyes and prayed the geese didn't have to shit.

"Don't waste any time," my co-worker was speaking to me and I opened my eyes. I felt the severity in his voice. I felt the severity in the sky. The world felt suddenly sick. Or perhaps it was just me. I raised a wrist to my forehead and it was warm, but I had been spending hours under the mountain sun.

He was telling me not to wait—not to waste time getting to my "island in the sun."

He was telling me this because I had just regrettably divulged my own personal truth. We all have one. I had spoken of my scatter-brained search for a physical destination I did not want to inevitably leave.

"I'm starting to think it doesn't exist," I laughed and I felt stupid for telling him.

"It does, I found mine once," his pale eyes smiled.

Some of the idiotic sensation left me. I had to tell him something. I wanted to say something real. The day was somber and I didn't want to fake it.

And he had just told me of the years spent watching his wife die from brain cancer. Of how the doctors had bragged to him with glee their new machines had found 25 lesions in her brain. The lines soured around his eyes and mouth. I remembered telling him earlier on the bus ride out of how I believed everything happens for a reason and I was regretful then.

He continued, "I don't really think we have more than a few years left anyway kid."

It is getting harder to pretend we do not live in frightening times. The details were running in my mind again.

100,000 died in Yemen... a US made bomb kills 40 children on a school bus... millions on the brink of starvation... genocide in Myanmar… 6,000 children separated from their families at the border... and the hungry heaps of bodies lying in the streets... and the look in the ex-marines eyes as he kept repeating himself...

I still felt "a few years" was a bit dramatic. But I was starting to think the times might be calling for drama; for intensity; for being shaken from our lazy stupors.

What if the only way to live for today is not to ignore the violent shit storm that is brewing, but to acknowledge it? To embrace it and to view it as reason to live now.

To live as if we only have five years left.

What would you do?