I was going to write something artistically constructed and deep-ish about time this month. I drafted it in pen on the skin of my thighs, a red tube resting over my lap, watching the pool and a neon red-orange clock tick down, second after neverending second. Something about hi-chews, the way time seems to stretch and compress even as you inhabit it, what it means to notice each relentless moment, and John Green’s essay about Humanity’s Temporal Range.
I might still write that piece, who knows? But when I tried to flesh out the ideas jotted on my legs, I realized my restless anxiety still hidden behind the intellectualization of what it actually means to be alive on purpose and with purpose. I don’t have the time, nor really the wisdom, to have an existential crisis on paper. (This is due tomorrow afternoon, and I’m in Florida with my grandparents, who seem to be getting older each time I look at them. We have tickets booked for a tour at nine.) So instead, the following is a collection of thoughts and experiences and situations that make me want to think, because writing, for me, is often the way I think best.
- A few weeks ago, I watched a live theater show. I cried with strangers. It was a lonely experience, isolating, because grief is so private. Despite looking in the same direction, watching the same two hours of performance we all grieved very separate things. The lights came up, people started to move out of their seats, and I bore witness to love. A woman, older, sobbing and embarrassed and so so sad, buried into the shirt of her husband, who held her.
- I’ve met lots of people at the YMCA. Angela with a thick German accent and an adorable puppy; Deb the former X-ray tech who worked the Detriot Lions’ yearly physicals; Vera, with tattoos, early arthritis, and an adorable wife; Karen the traveler with a bum hip and two daughters. So many people are just sort of incidents in my life, and I in theirs. I’m sure I spend more time thinking about them—in an effort to wring any sort of meaning out of my mundane, endless hours of lifeguarding—than they do about me. And yet, when I was chatting with Karen the other day, she told me to turn around, so I looked out the window to the walking track. Vera, wearing a brown beanie and a smile, stood waving for the first time in weeks. She lifted her cane and shook it to show me that her knee surgery was a success.
- One of my goals for 2025 is to spend 500 hours outside. I haven’t totaled how many I’m at now, but most of them have been beautiful. I’ve conversed with friends I haven’t talked to much recently and with my grandmother who I now realize is no longer immortal. I’ve shoveled to the sound of John Green extolling the virtues of Indianapolis. I’ve marveled at the sun and the snow and the water and the trees because somehow I’m lucky enough to experience it all.
- Lots of people love me. I’m not good at remembering, or having compassion when I forget, but remembering is good for me.
- What’s best for me, and sometimes hardest, is remembering I have a Father who loves me more than any human ever could.
- Today, I ran at a pack of seagulls and they took flight. The near-setting sun was behind them, they were around me, and I, anonymously and universally, simply by dint of my circumstance and physical presence, helped cause a single, beautiful moment.
In sum, I’ll be ok. You’ll be ok. I don’t wish you a beautiful life, because that’s a lot of pressure, but I wish each of you many more beautiful hours. Beautiful hours just might make a beautiful life.
Savannah Shustack graduated from Calvin in 2024 with a major in literature and plans to have the job of “books” one day. Rather like Ken, she is still figuring life out; the job “books” provides plenty of wiggle room, though she’s currently leaning toward being a librarian. Savannah is a New England native who enjoys watching hockey (Go Bruins!) and playing board games—especially ones she can win.
