Bolivia's "Road of Death"

Late at night, the teenager loves the road more than he loves himself. The dark asphalt seems to whisper a promise in his ears that there is something better, a little farther down the line. And that if he could get there, he would not have to drive anymore. And it is nice, late at night, to believe that this is true. I guess he likes to believe that he is actually going somewhere in his car, that he will eventually turn off the turnpike, park in the lot and put his cellphone away. Flowers, he imagines, will line the cobblestone walkway. Cigars will be had by all, and he’ll knock on the door, and be greeted by the insouciant smile of forever. When the road ends, he just will not have anywhere to travel anymore.

It’s so dark, though, on the road late at night, and the winding of the pavement and the tall trees that obscure the vista, that he cannot see anything but the divider lines that seem to flick on forever. Sometimes, he is sure that it is better that way, because, if he trains his eyes to watch the lines, he becomes hypnotized. If he is hypnotized by the whisper in his ear, which is like a lullaby that rocks him to sleep, and the forever flickering of the line in the road, it does not matter that he is never going to stop traveling late at night. So the headlights beat against the darkness, pointing forward forever. They point in the direction of expectation, and that hope for the flowers and the cobblestone and the cigars waiting just a little farther down the line, I am told, is the American dream.

My life is about expectation. I expect college to hold something better than High School, and a good job, with a paycheck too, to be better that college, and a family better than a paycheck. When, though, do I reach the cobblestone walkway, and no longer have to expect a future that is better than the present? Maybe I should feel empty that I lived for an acceptance letter. Now it has come, with brilliant luck and success -- more of both than I could have ever hoped for. But it turns out, the acceptance letter is only made of paper and ink. I suspect sometimes that I have not noticed a goddamn bit of the scenery as I travel late at night on the road, because I have just been so consumed by the sultry promise of the line that flickers forward forever.

It is a cliché to say that life should be lived for the moment – that those occasional Nows, when the earth stops moving, and the entirety of everything is felt in another person’s skin or the ecstasy of a thought, is all we really have. Well, sometimes clichés click into focus, and I begin, like it was the first time ever, to understand what I have said out of habit a hundred times before.