Between now and dead. What do you believe in? What do you stand for?

My first answer, probably my only answer: people.

If there’s anything the past year and a half (or March 412th) has taught me, it is that people, for better or worse, are all we have. I’m hesitant to continue this thought because I don’t want this to turn into a eulogy for the human race because frankly, we aren’t gone and we may not deserve to be eulogized.

But. In the same breath, people are capable of wonderful, magnificent, otherworldly things. That isn’t to say that they aren’t capable of awful, rotten, bullshit things, because they are.

I think that might be the most beautiful thing, our capability. It’s romantic and mesmerizing, all that we are capable of. We have the power to create beautiful moments where others can feel seen and heard, where we are genuine and honest, where we go a little out of our way or we take a little less and give a little more and we break the fourth wall, as if we look to the audience and wink, ah, yes, I’m human too, just like you. We possess the power to take a sledge hammer to idea that we are alone in our own little world and our own little thoughts and both realize and appreciate that there are more little worlds and so very many little thoughts, some just like our own, some incredibly different.

This sledge hammer looks different every time. It can be soft and kind, like a hand on your shoulder when you’re about to break, warm and stable, a reverse trust fall. It can be fast and sharp, like a shout or an unwavering stare when someone is too close, too loud, too unkind to another. A flash of fuck around and find out. We can unzip this skin of anonymity in our day to day, like pressing pause on the VHS player, life stopping in static and we can look each other, right in the eyes, and say quite plainly: you are not alone, you are not unseen, you exist, and you are valuable.

I’ve experienced it. It isn’t always the person you expect and it’s rarely anyone who has something to gain from it.

But, like we have this effusive ability to express the vulnerability of being human, we also have the ability to make that fourth wall even stronger. We can lay brick by brick and we can tell ourselves that we are stronger, better, and so very unlike everyone else. We can choose to be biting, to smack away the hand reaching out, waving to us, asking, don’t you see, can’t you see that I’m human too?

It’s the choice that matters. I think we are all capable of making choices that honor how delicate and lovely being a human can be, which is a roundabout way of saying that people are not inherently good, they are inherently *able* to be good.

We get to choose how we react and how we continue on, like Frankl so eloquently states: “forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation”. We are but a collection of responses to outside stimuli, which is a rather clinical way to look at the beauty of choice.

So what do we do with this time before? Between now and dead? With all of our power to choose? What do we do in unprecedented times when replying to another e-mail feels like giving up? What can we do with all of these good intentions?

Fortunately (for me) I don’t have the answers. I’m most likely to be found, headphones in, clinging to my own world, only glancing at the fourth wall every few hours. Is it enough to set that intention, to look for the moments when I can choose to pull someone’s face close to mine and shout through my mask “YOU ARE NOT ALONE. YOU ARE NOT UNSEEN. YOU EXIST. YOU ARE VALUABLE”? Probably not. Also a lot of people don’t like to be touched so please don’t grab anyone’s face.

I think what we can do, or how we can start, is to realize and remember that we are not what happens to us and we are not on this Earth ride alone. We are so gloriously capable and we can choose to be more than we think.

Importantly, this is a reminder that you are not alone, you are not unseen, you exist, and you are so very valuable. Make choices that reflect that and choose to help others to feel the same.