I See You've Called in Dead

by John Kenney

It lasted as long as it takes to listen to Japanese for Beginners and think, Hmm, maybe not.

Your identity is more interesting than your biography.

I possessed the universal college worldview that everyone else had it figured out, felt passionately about their major, and had a keen sense of the kind of life they wanted, and that I, alone, was clueless.

“What did you like best about your job?” “I was fond of the money.”

His black hair Brylcreemed back, full military mustache, a character from a Gatsby party, a man best photographed in sepia.

I saw behind a door normally closed to others, these things in our personal lives that coworkers never know about.

I’m not saying we should all go live like a monk. I’m saying that if you haven’t lived the life you want, if you haven’t loved life, then at the end, I think a deep and very sad regret comes over you. But if you have, if you’ve lived well … friends and family and … if you’ve lived … then just as true is the peace you feel.

Are we ever fully honest with someone else? I don’t mean to suggest outright lies, but do we really express those quieter, deeper feelings? Those amorphous, hazy things, core things that even we struggle to admit to ourselves. Do we share everything?

‘We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom.’”