"Life is short. Live it." ~ Unknown
I kept thinking about a similar thought long after I saw someone get run over by a car. I was standing near the college I go to, calmly listening to some music and waiting for my bus. When all of a sudden I heard a loud ''boom''. It was so loud that for a second there I thought we were under attack. But as I looked up I saw a pair of shoes in front of me and not so far away a body was lying on the ground. And it wasn't moving.
All I kept thinking about was what the actual f*** just happened a few feet away from me. And when I came to my senses I only hoped that the person lying on the ground was alive. But she wasn't. She was dead.
As I entered the bus I felt numb, a little shaken up of course, but still numb. I couldn't believe that this was the second time I saw someone get hit by a car. The second time I saw someone die. It happened once before when a taxi driver rushed out of nowhere and killed a teenage boy. So consequently I started asking myself why did I have to see something like this happen so close to me again? Is the universe trying to tell me something? Should I never drive a car? Should I stay off the streets? ...
And that right there is the usual Nina... overthinking everything that happens in her life. Finding deeper meaning in every situation. So, later on, I asked myself ''why such a negative mindset?'' Maybe reliving something as awful was simply a reminder. A reminder of how short life is and how each and every moment counts. You never know when you might step on the wrong road or sit on the wrong bus. But what you do know is that you have power over the life you live. You are the one accepting choices that might change your life forever. You are the one who's deciding what kind of life you want to live, what kind of person you want to be.
I used to think that talking about this kind of things was easy, but actually doing them was hard. But when I remind myself of such horrible experiences that I had to see, witness (and these are just two of them) life and everything else comes fastly into perspective. You see that there’s no point in not talking to the people you wanna talk to, no point in not doing the things you wanna do. You see this because you realize how one moment of carelessness can literally mean the end of everything (as morbid as that might sound).
When you’re just 21 and you’ve already experienced your fair amount of pain there’s no world in which you can’t advise people to hug, kiss and love the people they love. To say all of the things that are stuck on their starstruck souls. To do all of the things they’ve always wanted to do. Because life is short and sometimes we need awful reminders to wake us up since there's nothing worse than living or dying with regrets. There’s nothing worse than leaving your loved ones behind wondering why.
With love, Nina
Comments