The Measure

by Nikki Erlick

“Be groovy or leave, man.”

But sometimes I think we forget that it also takes strength to be able to let go.”

“But this is what humans have always done,” Maura said, her anger swelling inside. “We segment ourselves based on race or class or religion or whatever fucking distinctions we decide to make up, and then we insist on treating each other differently. We never should have allowed them to start labeling people as ‘long-stringers’ and ‘short-stringers.’

‘It is not the length of life, but the depth of life.’ You don’t need a long lifetime to make an impact on this world. You just need the will to do so.”

Their priorities. But, in Italy, I think we already knew. We already put the art first, the food first, the passion first,” she explained, a sweep of her arm encompassing the entire shop. “And we already put the family first. We did not need the strings to tell us what is most important.”

Se il per sempre non esiste lo inventeremo noi.

“If forever doesn’t exist,” she said, “we’ll invent it ourselves.”

Of course, people still wondered, would always wonder, where the boxes came from, and why they were sent. Were they meant only for the individual, to use the knowledge of your own life span however you saw fit? Or were they offered to the world in communion, to prompt some greater global change? Some predicted their true power would only be unlocked once every single person had looked. Others had begun to believe that they were never even meant to be opened, that the gift was simply receiving any string at all.