Grade 9 shop class
I'm probably blurring multiple memories together but we'll pretend this is all one memory. I remember a saying that was etched into a piece of wood and somehow I related to it then and I still relate to it today.
We had a wood shop class on the bottom floor and it was a pain to get to. I remember each table having multiple vice grips and I believe I sat a table that sat 4 people. There were longer tables but this was where I had chosen to sit.
The teacher was a gray haired man with a thick eastern European accent. He's not important to the story but I do remember him vaguely.
Etched onto this golden yellow slab of wood was "Why am I dying to live when I'm living to die". I believe it's from a song but I haven't heard it. However I remember thinking how clever it was then. I was living but I didn't feel like I was really living. When people say they lived, it always seems to be things were happening and things were certainly not happening to me.
I had a quiet high school life, I had friends, family, I didn't really need much. I didn't have any enemies or drama. I didn't feel the epic highs of highschool football but I also didn't feel the lows. I related to it then.
Today I still do. I have a good job, good life, I can basically do whatever I want. I am free. Yet I still relate to it because I am living but not really living. I'm still hungering for some far off future where I can look back and say that I've "lived".
Today, more than ever I relate more to the other side of that phrase. I'm living to die, not to say that's a bad thing as I am happy. However I can feel the days are going. There will be less and less.
I'm starting to feel my age, it comes in random moments when I realize.