The road sweeps along ahead of me, nothingness to the left and right, an endless expanse of rock and dust. In the distance, jagged mountains rip violently upward, tearing at the sky. Grand. Anguished. Angry.
The sun has just risen and the light casts long shadows like in the afternoon, but backwards. Opposite. Golden and burnt red and dusty brown.
It is 7 AM and the Nevada sun is already oppressive. Heat smothers the landscape, rising from the pavement in a haze. It waves in the air as it rises, some sort of ethereal dancer, other worldy and foreign to me.
The whole entirety of this landscape is other worldy and foreign to me, but resonates in a way that I recognize but am not quite sure I understand. This is desolation. This is emptiness. This is the beginning and the end.
Bright possibility burned to death by the sun.
I have lived a charmed life, and desolation and emptiness have not been common themes for me. I am grateful for that; I recognize how lucky I have been. And maybe, that is why this expanse tolls in my heart so. Maybe what I am recognizing is not the landscape itself, but a much-needed reminder.
Let go. Let go of the bullshit. Let go of the things that do not matter.
Like the anger I felt at the girl who flipped on the lights at 3 AM and woke the ten of us staying Las Vegas Hostel’s female dorm.
Like the annoyance I felt the evening before, when my flight out of O’Hare was delayed and I sat on the tarmac for over an hour.
Like the constant pressure I put on myself to climb, climb, climb.
To earn more.
To achieve more.
To just be more.
In the moment, the minute details of our lives feel so big. Last week, quitting my job felt like the biggest most important thing in the world. It dominated every thought… every conversation I had… every minute of my last 7 days. We spend so much of our lives striving toward something that stillness feels… wrong somehow. We lose sight of life, while neck-deep in the living of it.
But someday, when I think back on this year, those little day-to-day agonies will not be the things that stand out. In fact, I probably will not remember them at all. Hell, I might not even remember how hard it was to quit my job.
What I will remember is getting up at dawn this morning and driving out alone into the Nevada desert. What I will remember is the way the light danced across the sand, and the way the rocks soared upward, and how I felt so fucking small taking it all in. How I felt so strong for having done it. How I felt so grateful for the incredible people in my life, and so fucking awe-struck by this beautiful world we live in.
Hopefully, I will remember that all we get is this one chance – this one life.
Today was a perfect day.
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