I was stuck in quicksand. No matter how hard I tried, my legs wouldn’t pull. A rush of anxiety rushed through my body. I think to myself, will I be stuck here for an eternity? Will this quicksand pull me to the core of the earth where my body will lie restless ‘till the remaining time of the earth. How much more is there left to endure until my body has submerged into the depths of this lethal potion. How many more seconds do I have left until I’m gone.

I’ve heard that your life flashes by you in 7 seconds and so did mine; a nostalgic feeling of the past. I was taken 15 years back into the past where I stood in my backyard. It was spring 2005. The air was breezy, but the rays of the sun hitting my skin felt hot. This was the weather that was craved by the people in town; the weather that felt equalized with the perfect amount of cold, and just the right dash of warm. Our backyard was large. A maple colored deck in the shape of a square sat attached to the house. In front and beside the deck was lots of green space where we had planted a bunch of flowers. Flowers that ranged from shades of red to purple, encompassing all the lively colors of the rainbow.

I stood on the grass beside the white tulips playing with a skipping rope. All I had in hand was that skipping rope that I played with hours on end; how much joy a skipping rope held. There were so many games that could be created with a skipping rope; helicopter, limbo, cross skipping and much more. There were so many tunes that could be sung in rhythm of our feet. Now that I think of it, it was a skipping rope that brought me so much joy back in the days. One day, I  couldn’t find the skipping rope. The little me had thought that my life had ended there. No skipping rope, no life. I cried and cried in my mother’s calming arms. She held me there telling me that it’s okay, and that another skipping rope can be bought, but I cried even more because the one I had lost could not be bought again.

I had developed an odd connection to the skipping rope, no other rope seemed to satisfy me; not even the one that was worth more than mine. Time passed, I eventually forgot that such a skipping rope existed. Now I stand here in this quicksand thinking of the morals of life. Life has moments that can’t be replaced by others. There is something about things in your life that you are not able to see as different. There are things that hold so much meaning that “new and better” does not satisfy you. These are the objects, the moments, the memories that you must hold onto, and never let go because losing them would feel like losing the purpose of life.

While I stood here contemplating the morals of life, in the distance I see a rescue emergency crew. Perhaps I might survive, but in these seven seconds of my life, I have truly discovered the meaning of this life.