Best of Luck

by Jason Mott

“A good joke is just a small story, you know. Only difference is the delivery.”

But like most things in life—even though it was wonderful and glimmering—it wouldn’t last.

It was earthy and horrible . . . and it was the smell of rot. Of something living and dying at the same time.

You ever thought about just how much time and energy and years of their life most people spend just trying to stay alive?”

“Did you know that cancer patients are told to name their tumor?” “What?” “Yeah,” Will said. “They name their tumor. I learned that with Hayden. I think the idea is that it makes it less scary. You can make it less scary if you think of this horrible thing as just a person that you’re trying to send away, instead of thinking of it as death itself living inside your body.

“A father is supposed to protect his children from the world, you know?

How come we have a word for a child that loses their parents but no word for a parent that loses their children?

When people think about karma, it’s basically ‘anytime bad things happen to someone you don’t like.’ But that’s not really what karma is. Karma is about balance. Hell, the whole universe only exists because of balance. For any one thing, there’s an equal amount of an opposite thing, you know? And that’s how we all get along. We move through all of this balance.

“But let’s not confuse balance with justice. Those are two different animals. Justice is all about fairness, and I never said the universe was fair. No sir. Nothing about this universe is fair, and the only people who believe that are the people who haven’t lived long enough to have their stupidity corrected by life.”