Chubby zeroes

It’s when he was about to leave that he started to appreciate his situation. Things were not annoying anymore, but became interesting. Long days in the office stopped being tedious, but started to get intense. The thought “I’m doing it for the last time” dominated his days. The last meeting. The last visit. The last report. He looked at them all with freshly opened eyes, as if he was a stranger who was visiting someone else’s life for just one week. A few more days and he’ll be doing something that will feel more like being alive.

I looked at him, envious. It’s going to be long before me too, I’ll be given this last week to enjoy everything I didn’t enjoy so far. It’s going to be long before I attend this last meeting, for the first time my thoughts not drifting away, but staying there, in that room full of serious, worried people. I’ll appreciate all the numbers marching orderly in front of me, in a neat row, as if they were ants. For the first time I will not follow them out onto the pavement, the grass field further on, the trees and the clouds, onto which they will soon get if we sign this cloud hosting contract.

I will look at row 7982 of the excel sheet in front of me and will notice the beauty of the formula, the roundness of the eights and the chubbiness of the zeros, I’ll marvel at all the sums adding up and matching other sums in different places. I’ll cherish that moment, because from then on the only checkered sheet I’ll look at will be the table cloth or a tartan skirt.

So why can’t I enjoy row 7982 already now? The eights are just as round, the zeros just as  chubby as they will be in this last week. The sums add up and match their mates in a different column. But I look at them indifferently, to say the least. 

That’s probably because after row 7982 there will come row 7983 and 7984 and 7985 and then, surprisingly 7986 and 7987, followed by row 7988, and in 7999 my mood inevitably goes down and my attention out of the window.

But why do the same things, only done for the last time, suddenly become so clear, so interesting, so much fun?

And why doesn’t Life lived for the last time always taste so good?