15 minutes

What would you do if I told you that 15 minutes from now, you would be dead? What would you do, besides not believe me? What would you do? Suppose you knew that I was telling the truth. I wasn’t sad, I wasn’t happy, I was just the news. Like obituaries and little seeds in the ground that don’t have any names, there I was. And there were you, above ground, now with 14 minutes left to live. I heard of this girl once who had a real bad headache and 15 minutes later, she died. Before she got to the hospital, before her family in Thailand could buy plane tickets, with only strangers and acquaintances around her, with a headache, she died. If you want more of an explanation than that, all I can tell you is this: You have 13 minutes left. She was young and healthy and alive. No history of dying at a moment’s notice, she never had a brain hemorrhage before. She was happy, healthy, young, and alive. 12 minutes left. She was given no warning, no refund, no guarantees. She was exactly like every one of us. Only she died. Living people never think about death. I don’t know why that is. Oh, I forgot to mention that there’s nothing that you can do about it. Nothing. It is the 11th hour and you have 11 minutes. If there’s nothing you can do about it, then why would I bother to burden you with such information? I bother because, although there is nothing you can do about it, there is something that you can do with it. 10 minutes. 10 minutes is a long time. 10 minutes is long enough to remember the 3 happiest moments of your life—as long as you don’t have a brain-splitting headache. 10 minutes is long enough to pick up the phone and call the good friend that you say you never have enough time to call. 10 minutes is long enough to do something that you’ve never done before. 9 minutes. 9 minutes is never enough time. It’s not enough time to fly to Thailand, it’s not enough time to throw a big party and invite all your fantastic friends just because you want to celebrate their immensely enjoyable company, it’s probably not even enough time to cook your favorite meal and eat it one last time. 8 minutes. 8 minutes could go by unnoticed, like a small spelling mistake, or a sentence that didn’t seem important enough at the time for you to admit that you weren’t really listening. 7 minutes. But now you’ll never know. It’s too late. The 8th-to-last minute of your life is gone forever. Just like that. You thought that you would listen to whatever you heard and so you didn’t ask for it to be repeated but now, with 6 minutes left, you wonder :  What did she say? Was it important? Was it absolutely crucial? Will it matter that you weren’t paying attention? If you asked her to repeat what she said, would she say exactly the same thing in exactly the same way? Or would she get it slightly wrong or try to improve it or would she perhaps even already have forgotten it? Is a minute long enough to forget something? 5 minutes left. And you’re just sitting there reading, feeling as eternal as sunshine. They say that the sun will die and fade away after several million years. We take no interest, because what does it matter? We won’t be around then. We’re as eternal as sunshine. 4 more minutes. You still don’t believe me. You think it’s a joke but I’m here to tell you that it’s serious. It’s very serious. It’s so serious that you should be laughing, making fun of yourself and all those times you took yourself soooooooooooo seriously, so so so very seriously. Why? Seriously, I think you should start making fun of yourself. Right now. While there’s still time! 3 minutes left. Are you still there? Or have you gone to the beach? 2 minutes. You think I’m counting too fast. Too bad. It doesn’t matter what you think. 2 minutes. Are you happy now? You still have 2 minutes. Two, full, luscious, minutes. You spend some time—justifiably, you say, wondering how it will all end. Well. Let me tell you. It will end just like this. Not in some glorious triumph with the whole world watching you disappear into the night like the shooting star that you are. It will end just like this. Whatever you’re doing right now, whatever you were doing 15 minutes ago, that’s what you’ll be doing when you die. If this doesn’t scare or disappoint you, then I am happy for you. You have 1 more minute left. And a minute can be treated like an hour. I suppose now you think that you are owed something. You are owed at least this last minute, but you are wrong. I said that 15 minutes from now, you would be dead. I didn’t say that 14 minutes from now, you would still be alive. And even if that was what I said, I have been known to lie, I have been known to sincerely believe and pass on what’s false, and it rains where I come from. But much like a flower, you hope that there is some good in rain. You would like to think that this has all been some sort of elaborate fairy-tale trick to which there is a magical and happy ending where worms turn into butterflies and never ever die. Okay, I admit it. You’re right. You’re magical. And you have much longer to live than one more minute. You have the rest of the day.

Are you happy now?