Fate

I killed a black snake today; I know, terrible isn't it?  I like snakes, but this one happened to be six feet long and was meandering slowly along my winding route home.  As a general rule, I do not swerve to miss animals and don't get in my way when I'm driving home from work. I'm pretty sure that I got it with both tires, though I don't think it died quickly.

As I drove away, I could see it writhing in pain in my rear view mirror. Flopping and twitching on the hot tarmac, this snake was destined to suffer a fate of: slowing being cooked on the South Carolinian asphalt, being eaten by buzzards, possums, or wild boars, or getting the mercy-kill from another passerby.  I contemplated turning around and doing the latter myself, but that would've delayed me from getting away from work as quickly as possible.  So as I raced for home, my contemplation soon shifted to that snake's fate.  That snake was snuffed out early.

While I don't think wild animals' life expectancy is anything like that of domestic animals, I doubt that Mr. Black Snake awoke on this morning thinking "today is a good day to die."  In fact, I'm sure it was quite the opposite.  One wrong move and nature's course of history was changed forever, but are we that different from the snake?  Sure, we're our own sort of wild-domesticated animal; engrained with preserving ourselves, but no longer hell-bent on survival.  We're all going to die sometime and hopefully we can make our peace beforehand, but what if we happen to be as unlucky as the black snake?

I first became aware of my fate at a young age.  I pulled the string on my sister's explanation of the dinosaurs' extinction and the ball quickly unraveled.  I wasn't going to be six years old forever and, as it turns out, I wasn't even going to be around forever.  I've recently become more conscious of my own mortality and, quite frankly, it sucks.  I'm never going to get to do all of the things that I want to do.  At some point, my being will abandon those that I love and leave them with only memories. 

Live life to its fullest, leave nothing to chance, and have no regrets.