lesson learned.

Today was my first Friday without my sixth hour stats class, which I dropped on Monday, and I was headed home at 11:30 AM. I went in through the backyard, greeted by Blue and Red then noticed something in the pool. At first glance, it looked like a brown dog toy, then I realized it was an animal. A bird? No. For a second I thought it was my kitten, Jasper. After a moment of inner panic, I went a bit closer. It was a rabbit. A rabbit had drowned in my pool.

Since I was a kid, I have always had a soft spot for animals. Seeing the little creature floating, frozen in place, brought me a wave of emotions I had from when I dreamed of being a veterinarian. The whole experience sounds pathetic, but this little life-and-death reality check struck me. I took a shovel and gently lifted the rabbit from the water and sat it on the ground. For the longest time, I just sat and stared at it.

The essence of life, the part that involves the whole beating heart, breathing, and so on, fascinates me. Unless you are a doctor, it isn't often that we are confronted with death. The rabbit was gone. I was staring at what was once a rabbit. It looked like a rabbit, but it wasn't a rabbit anymore. I had a similar experience last April when my friend, Thomas, died in a car accident. The service was open-casket and I had never seen a deceased person before. It was all the more powerful of an experience because I knew well the picture of Thomas in my memory. What was inside the casket was not my friend; it was the means through which my friend lived his life.

My point that I want to get at is this: here-and-now has no guarantees; we don't know when our last breath will be. Everything in life, all of it, can all come to a screeching halt in the instant of a collision under the influence, the moment of unknowingly fall into depths you cannot escape, or hopefully while lying in bed, having lived and loved, with no regrets and the knowledge of not having wasted a single moment.