This is Amadeus and Spencer. Both of them live here. One of them is in the Bennett family.
(A rooftop bongo session took place after the taking of this photo.)
I remember being a teenager. I remember thinking that I probably wouldn't live that long, feeling that I'd lived so recklessly in the few short years since I had actually begun living, how could I possibly sustain that pace for decades? Turns out I couldn't, but not because I died. Just because I grew up. I got smarter. I had good friends who actually did die and I felt the ripping bitterness of heart break. I realized that their parents would never get to see them move out and and onwards and upwards. Mine would, if I wasn't stupid, if I wasn't quite as needlessly reckless I would live a long time and lot of things would happen. I had that realization looking out a window at the ocean at my friends wake. It was quiet, murmurs of hugging and consoling in the background. I looked out at the ocean and I realized that I would see other oceans, lots of other oceans in all kinds of places... if I was lucky.
That was the piece that changed everything. In my experience, most teenage people, and even shame on them some older people, feel that they are owed this life. That they are deserving. They forget. We forget that we aren't owed a damn thing. We are lucky as hell to wake up every day and even luckier to call it a good day. A day when no one dies, and we have our health and we get to look at the ocean and hopefully someone loved is by our side. We are lucky to live to 17 or 27 or 30 or 40 or any amount at all. In fact we are so lucky that it's us that owe. We owe and we forget and think we are owed.
God I'm glad I'm not a teenager anymore.
(A rooftop bongo session took place after the taking of this photo.)
I remember being a teenager. I remember thinking that I probably wouldn't live that long, feeling that I'd lived so recklessly in the few short years since I had actually begun living, how could I possibly sustain that pace for decades? Turns out I couldn't, but not because I died. Just because I grew up. I got smarter. I had good friends who actually did die and I felt the ripping bitterness of heart break. I realized that their parents would never get to see them move out and and onwards and upwards. Mine would, if I wasn't stupid, if I wasn't quite as needlessly reckless I would live a long time and lot of things would happen. I had that realization looking out a window at the ocean at my friends wake. It was quiet, murmurs of hugging and consoling in the background. I looked out at the ocean and I realized that I would see other oceans, lots of other oceans in all kinds of places... if I was lucky.
That was the piece that changed everything. In my experience, most teenage people, and even shame on them some older people, feel that they are owed this life. That they are deserving. They forget. We forget that we aren't owed a damn thing. We are lucky as hell to wake up every day and even luckier to call it a good day. A day when no one dies, and we have our health and we get to look at the ocean and hopefully someone loved is by our side. We are lucky to live to 17 or 27 or 30 or 40 or any amount at all. In fact we are so lucky that it's us that owe. We owe and we forget and think we are owed.
God I'm glad I'm not a teenager anymore.
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