The Days of our Lives

He lowers the seat and leans back. It’s the end of the day and this was one of those moments he usually took for himself. He looked up to the sky from the side of his window. The car was some sort of private cocoon at this time of night when parked at the corner. There was no one else around, no prying eyes, no noisy streets; just a quiet little place for him to have a quiet little moment to himself to blank out his mind and just relax.

But a blank mind was usually the last thing he ended up with at times like this. He had a hyperactive mind. One that was prone to overthinking things. One that was constantly questioning and searching – searching for what, he didn’t always know. Whatever it was, he knew that this was usually the part where things would sometimes suddenly make sense; where thoughts crystallize, where hidden feelings emerge, where the heart’s desires reveal itself. Not always, but sometimes at least

His thoughts were on quite a few people tonight; the usual suspects and a few others.

His father was out of the hospital finally. Doctors decided it was OK for him to go home mainly because he didn’t seem to be getting any worse. But in his mind, the old man wasn’t getting any better either and he was worried about what this might mean. In any case, he agreed. The medical bills were escalating by the day. He had found the local healthcare system to be so insanely inefficient and messed up. Only the rich could afford decent healthcare in private hospitals; the rest of the population like his family had to put up with overcrowded public hospitals, incompetent and overwhelmed medical staff and confusing bureaucracy. He made a mental note; get rich, migrate or die quickly before you grow old and ill.

His fiancee came to his mind. He missed her. He thought about the song written by Stevie Wonder... 'You are the sunshine of my life....." She was the sunshine of his life. She was expressive and extroverted, he was reserved and introverted. She was emotional but sharp; he was rational but easy going. They were so different. She wasn’t the kind of woman he expected himself to end up with of course. He had always pictured the woman he’d end up with as someone that was soft spoken, gentle and graceful. Not this sort of feisty, wilful, strong-minded, trail blazing woman he could never learn how to control. But despite it all, he had grown to love and adore her deeply. She had a softer more intimate side that only he saw, that only came out after years and years of peeling through the hard exterior. He missed the look on her face every time he reached out to brush her hair and touched her nose. He loved doing it. And she loved him doing it to her.

He thought about his sister. She wasn’t really his sister at all. But the relationship had blossom into something a lot like that. He cared a lot about her, and he knew she cared a lot about him too. He asked himself once if he was in fact in love with her. But realized the answer very quickly and very surely. No. He loved her – like how a brother would love a sister, but he was not in love with her. And as far as he could tell, she wasn’t in love with him either. She wasn’t in the best of times. She had just made a disastrous career move, quitting her full time job to become a barista at Starbucks only to realize that it wasn’t for her and she was living off her savings. ‘Don’t worry… God will provide’ she tried assuring him. ‘Don’t worry? It’s your financial future at stake, of course I’m going to worry. Yes, God will provide….He will send me to your doorstep with a bag of cash, that’s what how He will provide.’ he replied rather brashly. He remembered the hug at the end of the conversation. ‘God has made you a blessing to me.’ she said. Statements like that always made him feel uncomfortable. He never felt he deserved such words.

He recalled a funny moment he had just hours earlier. “I’ll buy you the biggest steak of your life if you can do that….” he had said to his brother – his real one. They were watching some guy gorge a 72 ounce stake in under an hour on the Discovery channel. His brother was getting all excited over food and eating again…. But he was starting to have some serious health complications because of his obesity. He didn’t know how else to motivate his brother to start losing the pounds. He had tried every approach he could think of except this. “If you can lose 10kgs by Christmas….. I will personally buy, marinate and cook you the biggest steak you will ever eat in your life…..” he said again. That seemed to make some sort of impact on his brother. He jokes that while for others dangling a carrot was the surest way to motivate someone, for him perhaps it was a stake. He laughed along. But in truth, this was no laughing matter. He wanted his brother too shed the pounds quickly… before it became too late.

He remembered a phone call he received yesterday. It was an old friend calling to catch up. Small gestures like that never ceased to win him over. A thought came to him; someone once called him too boring and serious of a person. On the other hand, someone else once called him an immensely interesting and awesome person to talk to. He wondered how both could be true at the same time. But he noted that the one that stuck around wasn’t the one he’d expected. Friendships can sometimes be peculiar. The ones you hope would last don’t always do, and the ones you never though would sometimes do. You never really know until all is said and done. This made him feel sad, yet hopeful at the same time.

He thought a bit about his life and the things that made it what it is. It certainly seemed like he had more cares and responsibilities than the average person his age. Some people seemed to have only themselves to be concerned about; who they are, where they’re going, what they do, what happens to them; the things they did and the decisions they made concerned only them. But for him, every step he made in life had to be done carefully because there were others who relied on him financially, emotionally, physically. The thought scared him a lot sometimes. He knew he could never avoid screwing up here and there once in a while. But regardless of that, he realized quite early on that his life didn’t belong to him alone… it also belong to those around him. That’s the way it had always been. He couldn’t be sure, but he felt this was the way things are supposed to be.

The days of our lives were not meant to be lived for ourselves only.

With that thought he pulled the seats back up, shut the engines and stepped out the door – emerging from his cocoon as it were and started walking home. There were people waiting for him at home.