The Boy Who Lived. - by Favor Ekanem

"And when death finds you, I pray it finds you alive.” I’ve forgotten where exactly I read it, but I’m fairly certain it was in one of the books in my grandfather’s room when we visited once.Forgot all about it because it didn’t make sense at the time, but I remembered it now when someone in front of me said “you only live once.” It brought the saying back into memory and into thought.“I Pray It Finds You Alive.” Simple as that, yet also terrifying and beautiful.Once, I thought life was something merely to be endured. It felt like a long hallway of empty rooms, each one identical to the last, and each step carrying me further into an endless, colorless stretch of days. I never minded that the next day came as easily as it had gone."What was there to be alive for?" I thought. I went with the wind, was emptied out by my own neglect, and began feeling haunted by the feeling that something essential was always just out of my reach.In the rare moments I stopped and took consciousness of my entire being; when I stopped and... considered myself? I hardly recognized the face staring back; a ghost, perhaps, of someone who had been alive. Once, and long ago.But then I started to have those moments; rare and fleeting, when I felt something. Sometimes it came in the feel of the morning light on my face to wake me up, or the strange thrill of a familiar face catching me off guard with a look that somehow managed to look new.Sometimes it was nothing more than the taste of food made by my father or the thumping of rain against my window — small things that, without my knowing, made my empty chest, not so empty anymore.And with them, I felt a certain wave of... clarity: I was waiting for something to make me feel alive, all while life was unfolding around me; a beautiful river with magical things had been right in front of me the entire time, and I had been content just to watch from the shore.I began to understand that being alive was not some grand destination, neither was it some perfect state to be earned and it never was. It was simply to notice everything; to open my eyes and accept even the bittersweet, the painful, and the uncertain. I learned that living is letting your heart be moved and letting yourself be broken open while trusting that what slips through your fingers was never really yours to hold forever. I remember standing in some medium level rain once, my clothes were soaked through and through but instead of shivering and cursing as I usually did, I just stood there and allowed the chill of it to remind me of how good it felt to be part of a world that could touch me so directly. I also remember the times I laughed so hard it left me breathless, and in those breathless moments, I felt... complete, I would say. Well, save for my lack of oxygen. And so, if and when death finds me, I hope it catches me with my eyes wide open, with my heart still in awe of the world, and still willing to ache and to rise. I hope it finds me walking barefoot through the grass, unafraid of whatever is in the soft ground beneath my feet, or finds watching the stars as if I were seeing them for the first time. I hope it finds me captivated in the beauty and sorrow of things and people, feeling every single one of them and letting it all flow through me, knowing none of it will last — yet loving it all the more because of that. When death finds me, I pray it finds me so deeply and undeniably alive, that I meet it with a soft smile.

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