Over time, I have learned that I must, in some meaningful way, contribute to the world I live in. When I am useful, I am happy. I sat with this thought earlier this afternoon, which was as sunny and warm as a friend’s laughter, and I realised this was an instinct as old as time. I was just another soul for hire in a long line stretching as far back as we can imagine, and then some. The excitement I feel when someone asks something of me is unparalleled. I do not know anything else that moves my feet as fast as a favour does. Can you do this for me? They ask me as if it is an outrageous thing to ask someone in your life. Why, of course. Why else would I be here?
I do not go out to seek my purpose. I live my life, and it often comes to me as a favour or a request and, sometimes, as duty. I do not know much else, frankly, and the questions of why we are here tire me. It is an easier answer. Why are we here? For others. Then, why are the others here? For myself, for everyone else. How do you think all of us got here in the first place? Humanity has gone through many perils, but someone has always stopped to help someone when they saw it. We should not complicate things which are far simpler if we simply stopped talking about them.
There is little else in my mind today but the past and the present. I do not care much about the future today. It will come as it comes. It will be another year soon, and it will pass like this one did—in a hurry I have not had the misfortune of experiencing yet. I wonder where time has to reach in the end that it passes us by so quickly. In my mind today are all the people I have met, all the people left behind, and the few who are still here. In this foggy bus ride to celebrate the joy of doing nothing for a week, I shall think about this: the life I have lived and the people I have loved. I shall keep them in my mind.
Time moves by so fast that we rarely get a chance to think of everyone else. But we should. We should. Life isn’t as easy without other people, nor is it worth living.