Dear Humans,

I’m a little mad that “life” is a noun. It really ought to be a verb. Life is not something you have; life is something you do–everyday, succeeding and failing, learning and forgetting, finding and losing.

We like to pretend that our lives are contained. We like to think there’s a true us that we’re in the process of finding or uncovering.

But the true us is what we cobble together through years of living. We go through phases and think for a while that we found the true us. But then we keep on living and look back on those old selves with embarrassment. And maybe we learn something along the way–maybe we find a brand of laundry detergent that we really like–but we never figure out enough to stop searching, to stop lifing.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt