While I was sitting at the kitchen counter, eating my oatmeal, I thought about dying. Then I thought about how there could be nothing. Everything could just not exist.

Then I looked outside, through the glass door. I saw the branches of our oak tree waggling, light dodging around the edges of the leaves, dropping onto the deck around the tree-shaped spots of shade.

And I was glad that it does exist, all of this.

And I was glad and grateful that there is what there is and that I am here for it. 

I thought about death and how it could all go black in an instant, which made me wonder, what if it had all been black from the beginning, always was and always will be, forever and ever, the end.