As that realization entered what was left of my mind, I looked to the shore and read the epitaph a stranger would write: "You will die here and people will remember you as the person who died here." That was it -- my entire life reduced to a single sentence -- me a cautionary tale on the back pages of the local newspaper.

As I looked to the shore, unhinged, I heard a word I had never heard before in a language I did not know, volcanic, pristine, pure, as if the earth, itself, had a voice.

"EXISTALZ! EXISTALZ!" it exclaimed, symphonic in its resonance -- my life, or what passed for my life up to this point, nothing more than a cartoon.

Only this moment was real. Only. This. Moment -- the one that would soon be my last, every cell in my body awake. What a joke! What a joke! And it was on me! Never before I had been so alive, so conscious, so completely awake, and it was all about to end.

And then? A moment I will never forget, one I will never be able to explain or honor from the sacred place from which it emerged -- a moment that brings tears to my eyes, here, now, as I write these words to you. Something took me over completely -- something far beyond who I knew myself to be -- something absolutely primal and all powerful. If infused me. It shook me, took me, gave me life, breathed me, pulled the strings that moved my arms and legs. I was not aware of it. I had no mind, no thoughts, no plan, no sense of where I was or where I was going. I had nothing, nothing at all. But something had me.

When I opened my eyes, I found myself in water only three feet deep. And so I stood, as if for the first time, and when I did, I stumbled to the shore and screamed the only word I knew. "HELP! HELP! HELP!" And why? Because the friend of mine who I'd been swimming with was still out there, alone... or so I thought.

"HELP! HELP! HELP!" I screamed again.

But there was no one on the beach, no one. I was all alone. It was just me... and the sky...and the sand... and the void.

And then... appearing from who knows where, I see a young woman slowly walking towards me. "HELP! HELP!" I scream in her direction and point to the ocean. But no one is there. No one. Just waves and foam and a lone seagull overhead.

In that moment... in that stark, brutal, incomprehensible, irreducible moment, I died a thousand deaths. Yes, I was alive, but my friend was gone. How could this be?

And then? We saw her head above water. That's when the young woman standing next to me and her boyfriend dove in and pulled her out, alive.

For the next two hours, we could not speak. All we could do was kiss the ground and sing children's songs: Happy Birthday to You... Jingle Bells... Row Row Row Your Boat and whatever else we could remember. That's it. That's all we did. Sing.

As the sun went down, we made our way back to the car and began slowly driving home. Three minutes later, we saw three hitchhikers by the side of the road and stopped to let them in. As they entered, they were complaining, letting us know they had just walked a mile, on this beautiful summer day, without a ride.

Speechless. We were speechless. We had nothing to say. Not a word.

Upon returning home, I made a vow I would never, ever, for the rest of my life, complain about anything -- that I would live the rest of my days in total gratitude, happy for simply breath alone. And that, my friend, is exactly what happened. For the next three days, I lived in a state of absolute grace and gratitude for everything in my life. The air. The breeze. The birds. The ground. The trees. My arms. My friends. The sky. My breath. And everything in between.

And then? On the fourth day of my God-intoxicated state, right after breakfast, I walked outside and noticed that the front right tire of my car was flat. I kicked it. I punched the air. I cursed. That's when I understood just how much work I still had to do to close the gap between my vows and the realization of just how sacred this life truly is. Every. Single. Breath.

Amen.

Photo #1: Ian Espinosa, Unsplash
Photo #2: Li Yang, Unsplash
MitchDitkoff.com
Storytelling for the Revolution
TimelessToday