The end of a long summer day arrives. Awake far too long trying to cram three lives into one saturday. On the road before dawn, work all morning, fish all afternoon, socialize into the night. Head meets feathers, drift into darkness. The phone rings, a familiar voice in an unfamiliar tone, “John, listen, Kay is in the hospital… It doesn’t look good…” Bolt upright. “Where? what room? What happened?…”

The last three weeks have had a profound effect on how I view myself, life, and the world around me. They say you should live everyday as though it were your last. I used to think that was a silly sentiment, and to a certain extant my opinion remains unchanged. It is impossible to maintain the high of an infinite end perspective, but there is something to be said for living each moment in a manner you can be proud of. After all, you may not have the opportunity to make things right later.

Dull, rainy spring days. Two people confined together too long in one small apartment. An arrangement of convenience and lust, smoothed over time into something more. “This isn’t healthy. I need to know what you want from this. Either we are or we aren’t.” Weathered in pride and frayed by a stubborn inability to admit what that something is. “I don’t know how to answer that…” “You just did.”

Having the last word is never as satisfying as you think it will be. Too often we take for granted that we can reconcile our differences later. That there will be another day for apologies and atonement.

“What do you mean? Where are you going?”  ”Out…”  ”And if I’m not here when you come home?”  ”Don’t come back… ever.”

The concept of revenge is the most primal element of human nature. The desire to get even, the _need_ to hurt someone in the way they hurt you is etched into the innermost fibers of the subconscious.

Cold, sterile walls bathed in the harsh whiteness of artificial light in the middle of the night. The quiet of a hospital at night isn’t peaceful, but rather solemn. Rather than calm, the air is filled with the discomfort of a thousand silent screams. “Why?” The involuntary expressions of the face betray everything we would otherwise hide. “I don’t know… I just… everything got out of hand, everything got too hard…”  ”But why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you come to me?”  Tears tell the story that words could never do justice. “I think you made it abundantly clear how you felt! I didn’t want it to turn out this way…” Sometimes there is nothing left to be said, sometime the long pause of silence says it all.  ”The doctors think I’ll be healthy enough to discharge tomorrow. I’m going into rehab, they won’t let me have visitors for the first 2 weeks… I think it’s time to say goodbye.”  ”What do you mean?”  ”I mean don’t come back… Ever.”

I’ve done and said a lot of things in my life I’m not proud of, but I’m learning. I’m learning that who is right is meaningless in the face of what is right. I’m learning that I can’t fix everything broken in the world, or even all those things in which I broke. At the end of the day, all we are is the sum of our interactions. When someone asks me how my day is, before I answer I think to myself, “Am I proud of the person I’ve been today?” The answer isn’t always yes, but the ratio is improving, and I think that counts for something.

So I ask you: How was your day?