Fill Your Dash
4/15/2020
Dear Reader,
When I was in highschool, I had an acquaintance pass away in a horrible car accident. We both played instruments in the band and used to sit three seats over from each other, never imagining the sort of fate he would run into. I wouldn't consider myself very self-aware during this period of my life, with no thought or reason behind my day-to-day routines and rather, looking forward to the week’s end. My best friend was in the car at the time of the incident and expresses deep sorrow to this day for not just the loss of life but the loss of everything Zach represented.
There were qualities about this individual that I still think about on a regular basis without formally being friends nor knowing each other. Throughout days of classes, he’d remind people to just smile and carry on and it was this charismatic persona he embodied that I’d envision myself one day feeling. He once told our music professor what it is that is meaningful to him and how he approaches life. Expressing the importance of not only staying positive through difficult times but to think of one’s life as a timeline. Without there being tick marks to represent events and occurrences, a timeline is merely just a line, or rather a dash. Because that’s what it feels like when there are no tick marks representing your timeline, it's a dash and so quickly does it feel like it is over.
This helps to motivate my daily routine and to think of it not merely a routine but as an experience. How are you currently filling your dash? What sorts of tick marks do you envision on your timeline two, five, or even ten years down the road?
