"Live A Little"

[Garnoopy 0]

Lieutenant Commander Garnoopy

Chief Engineering Officer

USS Manticore, NCC-5852

Personal Log Stardate 50403.27

“Live A Little”

 

Flight. Air whipping across your body. Trees rustling from the wind. Sun glinting off the smooth watered surface so far below. Sound seems to cease. The world around pauses, holding its breath. Nothing happens.

 

Gravity pulls. You begin to head downwards. Slowly at first. Every so slowly. Then you are pulled faster and faster. The air rushes at a higher speed.

 

Without warning the play button is hit and you fall fully. Destroying the smooth watered surface below you as your body hits and submerges into the warm liquid. Sounds mute as your head goes under for a few moments, then you pop up, laughing and grinning up at the bank.

 

Garn grinned wildly as he climbed out of the stream. Here he was, trapped in the future and his only concern was how high he could get off his new creation, a simple swing hooked to a tree on the beautiful grassy bank.

 

He trudged up and climbed back on, pulling the ropes backwards while kicking his legs forward. The law of physics would allow him to swing higher and higher each time. Climbing above the earth below.

 

People often believe that once you grow up you must leave behind those simple things you loved as a child. But why?

 

Higher and higher Garn went, grinning wildly. Closing his eyes every so often to feel the wind whipping across him and through his hair. His body warmed by the sun above.

 

Life could end at any point. No one had expected life to end five thousand years ago, but it did. How many people didn’t live their dreams? How many people didn’t take that extra time to enjoy life?

 

Why must you give up those little things in life as you grow older?

 

Now Garn was on Earth. Not his Earth, but Earth none the same. The responsibilities were minimal, with the systems working fine on the Manticore. It was no longer his job to get them back to the Earth they knew.

 

So, he was living life.

 

So few times had he been able to simply enjoy himself. A Federation starship didn’t often provide time for silly trips down memory lane. Yet those silly trips are so very important.

 

Silly is something Garn believed that is required in everyone’s life. If you cannot let yourself go and do something crazy for fun, what’s the point in living?

 

After all, a swing is silly, right? There is no logical point to it. It provides no benefit to your job in any way, shape, or form. Yet the feeling of the wind whipping and the earth flying below were something that one cannot describe. It’s a feeling that makes all other life’s worries disappear for a few minutes. They don’t matter on a swing.

 

He let go and flew through the air. He wasn’t thinking. Only feeling. Every single worry, every single life problem, every single thing that could bother him wasn’t in his mind. Not one thought plagued him while he was in the air. He was free of all the stress that we all feel every day in life.

 

Then, he’d hit the water and be submerged. Adrenalin pumping through his body and as he burst out of his submergence he’d laugh. A laugh that is only heard when happiness is true.

 

Can you say you’ve had many moments of true happiness? The world around us often takes that away and what happiness you do express is only minor. It isn’t truly felt inside you. For true happiness can only come when you have nothing bothering you.

 

Life is too short to not enjoy.

 

So, Garn climbed back out of the stream and trudged up the bank.

 

He was going to take another dose of life.