Letter to Friend

For as long as I can remember I have been fearful for the people in my life whom I immensely love. Fearful of their fragility while forgetting all about my own. This has helped make me hold no grudges against the ones I love, and to paddle towards the road of reconciliation as soon as I am able to, in the likely cases of heated exchanges. I have lately noticed an interesting polarity between my attitude to the ones I love in my life, and my own attitude to the ones I love in the stories I write, that is to say the darling characters I have so much joy conjuring. In the stories I write, my attitude to my characters is that I believe wholeheartedly that they have one long life ahead of them with plenty of time for them to mull over confusion, hurt and love without any fear of their imminent death. The truth is, neither they nor myself believe that they will die after all, and even if they happen to die within my story, their death is a dignified one (whether driven by tragedy or triumph) and renders them eternal.
In my stories, characters do not see each other for twenty, thirty years, for a lifetime, until a last one-minute encounter that is the culmination of the meaning of all the time lost. In real life, these twenty, thirty years, these lifetimes are an absolute waste of time.
My friend, unlike the characters in my films and stories, you nor I are immortal, and I want to squeeze as much out of the orange I was provided to share as much physical joy with you as possible, knowing that in addition to this sweetness there is still yet to be savoured in the every living or dying cells habituated within.