A jet airliner opens up and sends its passengers falling to earth. You'd expect them to scream, to cry, to cling to each other in fear, to prepare for the end, to pray, to think about their loved ones, but they don't. Instead, they turn on each other and start fighting.

"I hate you! I hate you!" they scream while flailing their fists at each other on their way down.

Some try to strangle each other to death. Some try to steal from each other. Some try to climb on top of others so that the other will die a fraction of a second sooner. Others cling to their possessions yelling "You'll never take what's mine!" and kick at anyone who comes too close.

They're all headed toward the same fate at the same time, but they turn on each other and try to get one over on each other during their short plummet instead of making peace with each other and with what's to come.

That's what our bizarre relationship with mortality is like. A giant vagina opens up in the sky and births babies who grow as they fall to their deaths, and they spend that short time hating, fighting, manipulating, and scheming against each other.

Of course it doesn't feel quite that way. Because of the way humans happen to perceive time it doesn't feel like a fast plummet toward death. From our point of view it seems to last just long enough for us to forget what's happening, to get distracted and get caught up in drama and conflict and opinions and grudges, and lose our focus on the great splat that awaits us below. 

But that is what's happening. We're all engaged in an intimate dance with death, whether we acknowledge that that's what's happening or not. We're in the thick of it. Everything we do in life is a ball that we're bouncing off the wall of that definite end from wherever we happen to be standing. It's the other end of the span of time where we get to be doing stuff on this planet, opposite where we are now. Death is standing on the same court as we are, hitting back every ball we serve.

Reading by Tim Foley.