Back then, you always told me to live with the end in mind.

But if you asked me, I think you saw the end much closer than most people.

That would trouble most people perhaps, but not you. There was always a quiet sense of acceptance that found its home in those irises of yours, between pensive looks and warm smiles. And somehow that never seemed to lend urgency to the way you lived, unlike others. There was no grand checklist for you to tick on the way out.

Instead, you lived as you did, taking each day as it was. Absolutely nothing and everything mattered all at once. It was a Catch-22 that maybe only you managed to resolve. You were the Clarisse who asks Montag to pay attention to the flowers by the road, and the taste of the rain. In the book, his clothes smell of kerosene interlaced with fear of the unknown, but you are barely bothered by it. The firestorm rages, but you pay no attention to it.

It burns without heat, a menace that leans in to consume but is ultimately harmless. It wants you to be ever so afraid of missing out, so you desperately rush from point to point, crossing off bullet points on the to-do list.

There are more important things to observe, you say. The world moves at a breakneck pace, and it is ever so needy. A jail of our making, you called it. A system that wants you to do this and that, simply because it is the right thing to do. You asked me if I ever stopped to watch a spider spin its web, or watched the waves lap against the moss-covered rocks at the beach. I laughed because it seemed like nonsense back then. What would be the point?

There were more important things to focus on. A job, a family, a purpose, I insisted. I was so adamant that I was right simply because it was what was the natural order of things. But true nature leaned towards entropy, you argued.

The natural order is disorder, and one must learn to live within it.

And the first step is to be able to simply pay attention to the things that are real, even as the world leans towards simulations to fill that void. Humans are odd that way, we agreed. Somehow, we create simulations because we want to experience emotion, but remain in control. Rollercoasters and horror movies fall in the same category.

I laughed because I loved both of those things. I still do.

But now, I find myself drifting towards simply being interested and present in the waking hours. I find myself genuinely interested in things like gentle light streaming through the window, forming little diamonds on the wall as it reflects off the dreamcatcher I hung up once upon a time. I sometimes pause to watch little critters go about their day, carting off food back home. Or maybe it’s a curious little pattern that I like to pretend only I noticed.

To be able to live in the present seemed like an insurmountable task. To be eternally terrified of the future, and haunted by the past is such a distinctly human problem. That never bothered you.

But you lived with the end far closer in sight than most people. It worried me but never you. In the book, Clarisse is killed by joyriders in a car driving at speeds that required billboards to be miles long to be read. It’s cruel, I argued, but you shrugged.

She lived more than they ever did and ever will. To ask for more would be greedy. She domesticated the spectre that loomed above us all. Most people would have found themselves at the bottom of a bottle, pills in hand to stave off the dread.

You shrugged again, and asked me if I got to see the sunrise that morning. It was beautiful, you told me. And you wished I was there to see it with you.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to live that way. But I try to pay more attention everyday, and to live fully in the moment.

I didn’t have an answer for you back then.

Now I think I do.

Yes, the sunrise is very beautiful. But I would like more time to watch the sunset for one last time, before I go.