No Guarantees

I know intellectually that my life could end a moment from now, but I don’t live like that is the case.

I make plans weeks in advance. I leave books half-finished on the nightstand. I assume there will be time to respond to messages I haven’t answered yet. I carry minor grievances forward as if there will be plenty of future opportunities to resolve them.

Some part of me understands contingency. But I live as if continuity is implied.

Recently, I was reminded how thin that assumption really is. Two people I knew. Both my age. Both unexpected.

Their lives did not taper. They stopped.

And nothing about the day before suggested that would be the case.

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We don’t walk around bracing for rupture. We live inside repetition. Morning follows night. Plans extend forward. Conversations pause with the quiet certainty that they will resume.

Repetition creates the feeling of durability.

Until it doesn’t.

Durability was never promised. It was inferred.

From habit. From survival. From the fact that yesterday looked like the day before.

But continuity is an assumption we build from repetition, not a contract we’ve signed.

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When someone I know dies without warning, it doesn’t make life feel dramatic. It makes it feel contingent.

The scaffolding I don’t normally see briefly becomes visible.

How much of this is held together by momentum. By chance.

Things are more fragile than I think.

Nothing is guaranteed to repeat.

But fragility doesn’t demand panic.

It asks for attention.

-Scott