Short Story: A Drive Home

I can’t get the tick of my turn signal out of my head. I’ve been on the highway for minutes now, maybe even hours. Before I got onto the highway, I signaled right but changed my mind just as it was too late to turn. Now I can’t get the tick out of my head.

A few miles back I saw roadkill that was pushed off to the side of the road. I think it was a fox. How did it get to the side of the road? I’ve never considered it but is there someone who brushes them off to the side or do they naturally get moved by traffic? I hope the fox, or whatever it was, didn’t realize it was about to die. A quick death has to be better than the terrifying, slow, approach of it. Knowing you’re going to die must be scary but dying without realizing it can’t be any different than not dying.

Why do we fear death, anyway? Is it some fear of the unknown? I guess if it was then it should be no more frightening than any other unknown - something can’t somehow be more unknown than another. Maybe it's a kind of fear of missing out? Could be but we don’t fear the past we’ve missed out on. Is it specifically the fear that we’ll be missing out on opportunities with people we know? Then why do people without anyone close fear death? Besides, even if those last ones were true then why would animals fear death? They can’t be this thoughtful about it.

Some red car just flew past me, don’t know why it was going so fast but it ruined my train of thought. I guess I should say, a person flew past me. Funny how easy it is to remove the person from the situation when we drive. As if it was a car that wanted to get to the grocery store two minutes faster and decided to cut me off. A person made that choice. And they probably made it because they didn’t think of my car as me; a car couldn’t get upset about getting cut off so who cares? Kind of a vicious cycle.

Oh yeah - maybe there is no logical reason to fear death then. Our survival instincts tell us to live so we can reproduce so that others can live so that they can reproduce. No different than foxes, we are still animals I guess. Not being afraid of dying, after all, would probably just lead to an extinct species. Wouldn't really be a road for me to drive on if that happened.

So I guess we shouldn't fear it? We could try to see it coming like how we see graduating college coming, there's not as much fear in that. I’m not sure if that analogy quite works though. What you do in college is important because of how the future you will look back on it. You would hope to accomplish something meaningful so that you can look back at those years without regret. But with dying, there's no looking back to worry about.

So what if you were to forget college completely after you graduated? And what if it had no effect on your future? You would probably just hope that you enjoyed the time there. You might also hope to have an impact on the people you leave behind, you know, so your time there has a little more meaning. While some people are still trapped in that bubble and you are gone, maybe you will wish to be remembered there.

But even if they don’t remember, it wouldn’t really make a difference. There is no way to know if what you did had any effect after you left. Maybe you did good but those you left behind forgot about you the second you left. Or maybe they construed what you did there into something negative. The only reasonable thing to do, then, is to do what you think will have the best impact and ignore any effect you actually have. Put your good into the world and know that you did what you could.

I hope the fox, or whatever it was, didn’t realize it was about to die. It might have realized how little it had done. I haven’t gotten the ticking out of my head but it's slowed down a bit. I’m getting close to my exit now, glad I can finally call it a night. It’s been a long day.