"In a New York minute, everything can change."

"In a New York minute, everything can change."

Don Henley

I attended a celebration of life last weekend for a young man who took his own life earlier this spring. He was twenty-nine years old, diagnosed his senior year of high school with schizoaffective disorder, a disease as chronic as it is misunderstood, and one that, for now, has no cure. His father, a classmate of mine, stood up and gave an account of his son's life that was both an education and a love letter. Somewhere in the middle of it, he read a line from Don Henley. In a New York minute, everything can change.

Henley wrote that song about a man named Harry who simply vanishes one day at a train station, his coat left behind on the platform, no explanation offered. It is a song about a city that never slows down long enough to let you catch your breath, and about how easily we can lose the people we love while we are still telling ourselves there will be time to say the things we meant to say.

My friend told us about the last day of his son's life, the way you describe something you have already relived a hundred times, searching for the moment you might have stopped it. On April 29th, his son was here. On April 30th, he was gone. Twenty-nine years, and it came down to one date turning into the next, the way any two days turn into each other, except this time, nothing on the other side of it looked the same.

We so often say “life is short”. We say it at funerals, and at the start of every new year, and then most of us go back to waiting anyway. Waiting for the timing to be better, for the conversation to be easier, for the version of ourselves that finally says what we mean instead of the one still rehearsing it. A New York minute does not check whether or not you are ready. It’s here and gone before we even know what happened.

So tell the people you love that you love them, out loud, before you need a better reason to. And if some part of your life, a marriage, a job, a version of yourself you have been meaning to leave behind, is not the life you actually want, stop waiting for the minute that gives you permission to do what you already know is meant for you. It rarely announces itself. Most of the time, it is already the moment you are in.

Love and Light,

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