Nov 17 2008
Day by day
When are we dying? Are we dying when doctors diagnose a fatal disease, or are we already dying even when no tumors are threatening our cells with a conquest that sooner or later will happen? There is death in life. It may not be easily perceived because we still breathe, and we go about our daily chores with nonchalance, as if death could never happen to us. But it is still there, lurking.
There is too much death, or possibility of death, around me this year. I have seen a child die, and people I once knew diagnosed with serious conditions. I have even flown close to my own chance of making it to the surgery room, although it did not happen. Of course, I have also seen the death of a form of love…although I think it was more the abortion of a possibility. How frail life is! We sustain it with infatuation, work, food, trips abroad, and we think it is worth it in as much as we can keep all that circus going. Now, you scratch the surface a little, and it gets really scary. People around us are touched, regardless of their age, and there is no explanation. When a doctor comes out of an operating room telling you bad news, you really want to think that it will not happen to you because you did things differently. I don’t know, perhaps you did not eat so much fried food, or you drank less wine, or you woke up at normal hours or you simply…were lucky.
That is it. You were lucky, and it still did not happen to you. So you take the hand of the woman next to you, the one you have chosen to love, and you hold it tight, thanking life for not dying on you for real. Or you go and accept that proposition of two 30-year-old European women who simply want to have sex with you in a threesome. Or you write your blog, because it makes you happy. Or you go to bed promising yourself that you will treasure tomorrow twice as much, because now you know this is all it is about… living (or dying) day by day.
