A loan...

A loan...
By David Alberto Muñoz
           
I could not sleep last night.  I don’t know why.  Well, maybe I do.  It is just I’d like to pretend nothing is going on.  But if I am honest with myself I know sooner or later it will happen.  It’s inevitable.  It happens every single   day.  Thousands of souls are born all over the planet but the funny part is that they don’t realize that at the precise instant we are alive that is the moment we are condemn to die.

Some people like to play games and lie to themselves but I am aware life is just like a loan.  Yes, it is given to us but eventually we have to pay it back.  Sometimes it takes a lot of years and if you are careful maybe you can actually enjoy your life.  Sometimes one can become very bitter and despise everyone but at the end we all go to the same place.  The bank won’t allow anymore extensions.  We all have a date with death.

I am not trying to sound melodramatic or anything like that.  It is just the reality of life.  It actually doesn’t belong to us.  Quite the contrary, it might be compared to a mortgage.  My grandmother got an 85 year loan with 4% interest rate.  Those were the days some say.  But I think in my case the duration of the loan is going to be shorter.  I’m just guessing I know.  Maybe I am preoccupied with it but like my father always told me:  “We are all going to die.”

When we are young we never think about it.  We feel we are going to live forever.  But one day we realize we are alive and we all have a debt to pay.  Sometimes we get behind the payments.  Some people never catch up.  There are foreclosures and the banks take the title of the property.  Sometimes too soon, others is almost as if they forgot they loan was due.  But at the end, life is only that, a credit, and advance; it has been financed and we only borrow it for some time whether we like or not. 
           
We make mistakes along the way.  If I knew what I know now forty years ago my life would be different.  Although once you actually think about it I cannot image my life without my errors.  We are so inaccurate it makes me laugh.  We think we know how to live.  We say to ourselves: “From now on I am only going to do this…”   Thirty seconds later we are committing the same bloopers, the same missteps, the same slip-ups. 
           
Sometimes we get lucky and things turned out to be OK.  There are even times when we surprise ourselves or perhaps it was that the bank gave us a free month of rent because the economy was bad and they wanted to help people.  Please!!!  Sometimes we hurt the people we care the most for without even realizing it. 

There are times when confusion sinks in and you don’t know what to do, where to go, what decision to take.  We search for options.  We want to refinance or the interest rate goes up because we never read the small print and we went into a variable rate not knowing how it was going to affect us.

Then we make a reevaluation of our life and we promise ourselves we are going to change and we will never commit the same mistakes and we tell the bank from now on our payments are going to be on time but soon enough we find ourselves in the midst of a crisis struggling to keep afloat, still breathing but knowing the date will come soon.  Every second that passes away we come closer to our deadline…dead…line…

That is why I think it’s better to enjoy the duration of our loan.  I don’t know what comes after death.  It really doesn’t matter to me.  What matters is that I want to live my life to the fullest, enjoining every moment.  Giving myself always space to be happy.  I guess what I am trying to say is we need to save a little bit of time to enjoy life.  Even happiness needs to be learned.  Even a smile takes effort if we do not know how to enjoy it.

I could not sleep last night because I was thinking about my life.  And you know what?  I think I like it.  Maybe that is the way I want to be remember. 

“He enjoyed his life.”
           
Death it’s funny.  It happens so fast.  You don’t even realize it.  One moment you are here, the next you are gone.  One moment you breathe the next you depart. It is just life, like a loan that eventually matures.   
           
Maybe I am death already but I haven’t notice or maybe I am alive and I know it.
           
It is only life...but it is my life...

© David Alberto Muñoz