I feel that life's big equation is less adding and more about subtracting.

You think you're okay until you realize you're not. A former classmate of mine died in a car crash one month before his high school graduation. The night prior to prom. How much could you possibly experience? He will never move a tassel from the left side of the cap to the right. He will never vote. He will never live that first terrible night away from home. He will always be seventeen.

There are so many individuals in this world that would have benefitted if someone like, say, Franco, Musselini, Columbus, or Hitler passed away at seventeen. Spaniards would be alive, Italians, the people of Espanola, the Jews... well, basically, the non-Aryans.

My classmate never discriminated or spoke a bad word against anyone. You don't realize how truly great someone is until it's far too late. A foggy night on the road might forever be the end. What canyou say about someone who dies at seventeen? Many will argue with me when I say that it wasn't his time. I know I'm no deity, before that argument is thrown back in my face, but who could say that seventeen is the appropriate expiration date? I mean, my aunt ... she was four when she died. Is four appropriate? Who decides the cut-off point?

Myra Hindley killed five children with her lover in the sixties. John Wayne Gacy raped and murdered 33 boys in the seventies, dressed as a "Pogo the Clown". Why the hell did they live?

Why does it take death or loss or some kind of tragedy to see clearly? Can chaos only end if it hits rock bottom? Does it have to be this terrible?

All questions I'll have to find my own answers to... or come to realize that there are none.

So, if you love someone, say so. If you want to do something, don't hesitate. Cut your hair. Skydive. Eat oysters. Don't think; just do. You never know when the brakes will stop working until it's too late to do a damn thing.


Anyway, I'm not going to dwell on this. Or try not to. As Steinbeck said, if you have to make the choice, "we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world".

And so, I feel I should mention that I'm graduating. Mini-round of applause for me. Sometimes, the littlest things make you happy; and I guess that's kind of beautiful, in a way, that it doesn't take too much. (Yes, that's right, I don't consider graduation a big deal, but I'm very Type A, so that should answer your questions there.)

So, I was just wondering, if anyone reads this, what are some of the little things that you find beautiful and heart-warming and just ... happy.