[ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ]	“You can’t spend your life worrying about the little shit,” he said, “and when you die, everything else is little shit.” Mike told me this when I was at sleep away camp. He was my counselor, but the way he talked to me, made me feel like we were old friends. We were sitting on the dock in our Crazy Creeks, the camper’s rocking chair, watching the sunset. Mike stroked his scraggly beard and tugged at his cargo shorts as I rehashed my damaging experiences with Mary Jane. I had told him the story about being rushed to the hospital which prompted him to tell me his story. He had been in a car accident the previous year and they had to shock his heart to revive him. He was technically dead, flat lining, but they brought him back. As the sun airbrushed the sky in shades of crimson and pink I began to understand what he meant. I hadn’t gotten that feeling when I was revived in the hospital. I didn’t reach some sort of enlightening, new found respect for life. I was pissed. I wanted to die and the doctors stopped me. He didn’t want to die. He wanted to live. And the doctors gave him that chance. He was so grateful for his second chance, it made me feel like a selfish sack of shit. He asked me to think of the good things. He asked me throughout those blurry years what good memories I had. I had to think long and hard. I remembered music. I remembered going to the reggae concerts in the park or going to punk rock shows at hole in the wall bars. I remembered reading, getting absorbed in these characters for hours, listening to their stories. I remembered sitting on the balcony at my mom’s apartment, writing poetry and watching the summer rain. I told him this. These little bits and pieces of feeling content. He told me that those little things, the things I deemed trivial, were the things I should be focusing on. Plaguing them with drugs and depression, makes them easy to miss. For the first time in years, I listened. Not heard, listened. Not to my mother, not to the doctors in rehab, but to this counselor I had in summer camp. The average college student just trying to earn a few bucks over the summer, to have some fun, and hopefully make a small impact on a kid’s life. And this small story, made me open my ears and my eyes, to see what life was really all about. Not focusing on the little shit, but on the details that make life so amazing and beautiful.