How will you live today?

Admittedly, thinking twice has never been my strong suit, so when the trucker who was hauling Sean’s motorcycle to Tulsa from LA called to tell me he was stuck in traffic in Dallas I said, “No worries. I’ll be here.” They arrived just before midnight. Jason and his driving partner whose name I won’t remember. They were clean cut compared to what I had envisioned. I gave them an extra twenty on top of the three hundred we had agreed on. They were late to drop off another bike in Kentucky. Sean’s bike was just like I remembered it and it felt good to have it.

I stayed home from work this morning so I could take it to a repair shop. Instead of borrowing a truck I decided pushing it there would be faster. I pushed it the whole way without stopping, even up the long hill that runs about five blocks at the midway point.

I did receive a few odd glares. An old man asked me, “If I had cursed it yet?” And I am pretty sure someone suggested I go fuck myself as they speed passed me on one of the busier sections of road, but I didn’t have time. No one asked if I needed help and I would have refused if they did.

The mechanic told me the bike is a 1997 Honda xr650r. “A great bike for riding trails. They aren’t street legal when they come out of the factory, but someone added a Baja kit, these turn signals and headlight, so it can pass as street legal.” Sean always knew how to exploit a loophole. I probably increased my pace with every step on the walk home. I phoned my Dad to give him an update on the bike. We discussed the pros and cons of the bike all of which was opinion because by the end with both admitted neither one of us knew what the fuck we were talking about. Which happens often, the talking, not the admitting.

A young married woman in a black jeep who had passed me earlier when I was pushing the bike up the hill smiled as she pulled back into her driveway and by the time I turned onto my street I was all smiles. Life is better than it has been in a long while. I thought how grateful I am to be alive. And before I could even comprehend what I was about to step on, I blurted out, “Are you fucking kidding me?” Because there, laying smack (and I do mean smack) in the middle of the road was a freshly killed squirrel. Fresh because the blood still flowed out of his eyes and fresh because it had only been twenty minutes since I had passed this exact spot and the squirrel was not there before.

Why go on if this is the way it could all end? Here is this poor squirrel who was probably just doing his thing, trying to get across the street to get a nut and for no reason, with no warning, bam, he’s dead. Sean went out the same way. One minute he is floating down the Kern River on an inner tube and in a freak moment when no one was looking he falls off, smacks his head and drowns. Why didn’t the squirrel stay out of the street? Why didn’t Sean stay home? Why the fuck did he always take the risky way?

“Sean you should have played it safe. You should have stayed home. You wouldn’t have hit your head, you wouldn’t have drowned. You fucking asshole, you would still be here.”

“But I wouldn’t be have known what it was like to live.”

Sean knew what made life worth living. He knew if he didn't take risks and fight to get the most out of every minute of every day he would never know what it was like to truly be alive. I was reminded of that this morning. It is not what you do or how you die, but how you live. So if you are reading this, I hope you will be inspired to make the most out of today. Not because you might die, but because you are blessed with an opportunity to know what it is like to really live.

"Much love, my brother, and I'll see you when I see you."