Parece un día cualquiera. Te levantas, te sirves una taza de café, y sales. Pero hoy, al abrir la puerta de tu casa, hay una pequeña caja de madera esperándote. Esa caja contiene tu destino: el número exacto de años que vas a vivir. Desde los umbrales de las puertas de los suburbios hasta las jaimas del desierto, las personas de todos los continentes reciben la misma caja. En un instante, el mundo se sumerge en un caos absoluto. ¿De dónde proceden esas cajas? ¿Qué significan? ¿Lo que prometen es cierto?… (más)
Deborah had once confided in Nina, after her third drink at the holiday party, that whenever the team discussed a shooting or a natural disaster, she was struck by how lightly their words were tossed about. In her three decades as a journalist, as the headlines seemed to grow ever more grim, Deborah had seen the words shed their weight a little more with each occurrence, until they barely resembled the dense nouns and heavy adjectives that once pressed upon entire rooms. But that was the only way to continue working, Nina thought, to shield your soul from breaking.
Did a patient receive less care because her string was short, or was a patient's string short because she received less care? It felt like the world's most fucked-up version of the chicken-or-the-egg conundrum.
"You can always count on the artists to step up," she said, "especially during a crisis."
"Well, some days can get pretty dark," Hank said, "but other days, I just try to remember that I've lived a good life. I did my best to help people. I fell in love a few times. I tried to be a good son." Hank leaned back slowly in his chair. "You know, I watched a lot of people come to the end, and everyone around them kept begging them to fight. It takes real strength to keep on fighting, and yes, usually that's the right answer. Keep fighting, keep holding on, no matter what. But sometimes I think we forget that it also takes strength to be able to let go."
Jack thought that he knew what loneliness felt like, a perpetual outsider among his kin, a mistake. But that was always the absence of love. Here, with Javi, it was the loss. And losing something felt so much harder, so much lonelier, than simply going without.
So Ben sat there, on top of a storage trunk, in the arms of his mother, under the hand of his father, and everything that needed to be said was said in the silence, in their touch.
I'm sorry, Amie. I'm sorry for the shock that this letter will bring, and I'm sorry because you once asked me to write about little things, and this is perhaps the biggest thing of all. But you also said that we could each find our own measure of happiness. A stranger recently told me that she didn't want to waste any time feeling sad. She just wanted to live as much as possible. And I think that's as good a measure as any.
"I challenge everyone to do the same, to stand up against the people in your life who are acting unjustly. Help them see that we are all the same, all connected. We are all strung together."
Maura thought that maybe it would be nice to be married, to have something that felt solid and lasting in her otherwise upended life. Maybe, despite everything her string had stolen, this was one thing she could still have.
But the melody played as clearly as ever, and all the people walking around him, busy and distracted as always, paused for a second and turned their heads, trying to see where the music was coming from.
Parece un día cualquiera. Te levantas, te sirves una taza de café, y sales. Pero hoy, al abrir la puerta de tu casa, hay una pequeña caja de madera esperándote. Esa caja contiene tu destino: el número exacto de años que vas a vivir. Desde los umbrales de las puertas de los suburbios hasta las jaimas del desierto, las personas de todos los continentes reciben la misma caja. En un instante, el mundo se sumerge en un caos absoluto. ¿De dónde proceden esas cajas? ¿Qué significan? ¿Lo que prometen es cierto?
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Pero hoy, al abrir la puerta de tu casa, hay una pequeña caja de madera esperándote. Esa caja contiene tu destino: el número exacto de años que vas a vivir.
Desde los umbrales de las puertas de los suburbios hasta las jaimas del desierto, las personas de todos los continentes reciben la misma caja. En un instante, el mundo se sumerge en un caos absoluto. ¿De dónde proceden esas cajas? ¿Qué significan? ¿Lo que prometen es cierto?
A medida que la sociedad se une y se separa, todos se enfrentan a la misma decisión estremecedora: ¿desean saber cuánto tiempo van a vivir? Y, si es asÃ, ¿qué harán con ese dato?