If We Were Vampires — An Analysis

(Warning: this is a long post–but if you stick with me, I think you’ll see it is worth the read.)

If you’re like me, you have a bunch of Spotify playlists that help get you through each day. And, like mine, they might be evolving. I often hear a song, like how it sounds, and add it to a playlist without really listening to each and every word. I know that I’ll get around to it eventually.

So, I’m driving to work a couple of weeks ago and listening to one of my playlists. I’m lost in thought, but I stop to listen to a song that had only recently been added.

Then I hear THE line: “Maybe time running out is a gift.”

Say what?

The first time I started listening to this song, I thought it was going to be silly, an assessment based shallowly on the title. If We Were Vampires. Really? A song about vampires, as if Twilight wasn’t already way too much?

For better context, take a listen befor you read on.

Nice, right?

Now back to my drive to work. As the song got going, I thought that I liked the voice, I liked the tempo. It was a pretty peppy little song.

And then the refrain.

Whoa! Wait. How did this vampire song suddenly become so serious? Talking about a lover dying? WTF?

I rewound and started listening more closely.

And then my stomach started doing backflips. And then the tears.

You see, this song speaks to the heart of human existence. No matter how much we might hate it, death is inevitable. We’re not vampires and we’re not immortal. The specter of death is always waiting just around the corner.

So what is it that we do as a result of having that knowledge? Or, better yet for the sake of this post, what should we do, if anything?

The song tells the story of a lover who recognizes that, if he and his beloved were vampires and would live forever, they wouldn’t reach out to hold each other’s hand. They wouldn’t appreciate the other person’s loving arms. They wouldn’t worry about taking care of their health. They wouldn’t see the value in the other just being there through a crisis.

They would take “life” for granted. Because, why not? They have plenty of it. Infinity of it.

And then the turn that took my breath: Maybe time running out is a gift.

So antithetical to what we all seem to want. If, like me, you’re getting way closer to the end than you are to the beginning, it doesn’t seem like time running out is a gift at all. Quite the opposite. More time would be a gift. Having one more day with those we’ve lost would be a gift. Never having to experience grief again would be a gift? Right?

But this very different perspective adds layers to those very thoughts. Perhaps we want more time to be with our loved ones. Perhaps we want more time to do or see more. Perhaps we want more time because we want to speak our truths. But the catch is that, if time wasn’t a limit, perhaps we wouldn’t feel those desires so strongly. Perhaps we could put those things off because, after all, we’d have all the time in the world to get to them later. And we just might not get there.

And that’s the gift of knowing that time is running out. That our hours and days are limited. If you want to kiss the guy, write a book, or watch a sunset from a beach in Bali, now is the time, because you might find that your promise to get around to it later is a lie that you too often tell yourself. It is knowing that this can’t go on forever that should propel us to chase our dreams or take the risk now.

At this point in my life, I sometimes worry that age and physiology are against me doing much of what I wanted to do. I likely won’t hike the Appalachian Trail. I want to go to New Zealand, but I don’t know if that will ever happen. I wanted to move out of Tennessee. That seems so much harder now as more years have passed. I wanted to hear all of my Dad’s stories from his childhood. I will never be able to hear his beautiful voice tell them.

But this is not a downer post. While some or many of those things are true, others don’t have to be. I don’t know how much time I have left, but I know that I’m not getting any more of it by doing nothing. I want to write a book. I want this blog to be successful and to make a difference to at least one person. I want to see Italy and to drink wine in Tuscany at sunset. I want to stand in awe and try to soak up the grandeur of Alaska. I want to run a 5k. I want to grow a kick ass garden. I want to read 30 books in one year and then 40 the next.

More importantly, I want to spend time with my family. My mom is turning 85 years old this year. I can’t hear my dad’s voice anymore, but I do have the chance to hear hers. I can hug my boy, and laugh with his girl, and share travel dreams with my girl.

And I can reach out and grab Kevin’s hand. I can touch him, and be kind, and we can talk. Because maybe we’ll have 40 years together, and, no matter how painful the thought, it’s likely one of us will have to spend some days alone. And when that happens, I hope the one of us remaining has no regrets. I hope that we can look back and know that we sucked every bit of life out of the time we had together. We don’t have a lot of time left to do it, though, so the time to start is now.

As I continued my drive that morning, I made a baby step commitment to myself. Stop sweating the small things. They are insignificant and worrying about them blocks my way from writing a scene in my head or planning a trip or working out. Work woes? Not important in the bigger picture at all? Traffic? It’s time to sing out loud in the car. A little thick around the waist? Do my best to eat healthy and exercise and let the lumps fall where they may.

Because I want to appreciate all the moments in life, even the bad or sad ones. Knowing that I don’t have all the time in the world to do so makes it all the more important for me to do those things now and to bask in every single experience along the way.

Maybe time running out is a gift, after all.