- [Safra] Imagine a world with no days.
No tomorrow, no weekends, not even weeks.
Imagine never sleeping.
Imagine waking up exactly once
because the only two days were today and death.
Imagine just one decades-long corridor
with the end visible in the distance.
Imagine the people who lived there, like elongated screams,
no time to be anything other than desperate and sure of it.
(swishing)
(thumping)
(soft music)
Imagine how grateful you'd be to live in our world instead.
(soft piano music)
There's a century and it's separated into decades,
and they're divided into years,
and each year has 12 months,
and each one's divided into weeks,
and then days, and then hours.
And every few weeks at 3 p.m. on a workday I receive a box,
and part of it I like and part of it,
I'll never look at again.
And the part of me that's still obsessed
with this kind of thing loves it
even though other parts of me don't.
And, they contrast but they coexist as well,
because imagine if you had to be one thing all the time.
And all parts of me will be slightly different tomorrow,
and in 10 years I'll have completely different taste
and all you can do is take things one box at a time.
Every day, every year, every point in your life
is its own world, its own box, and you can choose to stay
or you can choose something slightly better
or something slightly worse.
And one day you'll say to yourself,
what I really want is in that box way up there,
so it's impossible.
Other people must be born up there or something,
and sometimes they are.
But taking one step up is super easy, and you can do that.
You can get to tomorrow, and the day after that,
and same with next Tuesday and next month
and 10 years from now.
And then, one day you'll look back
and you'll look down and you'll realize
you're a million miles and a million days
from where you started and you'll be like,
how did I do that?
But you did it because all you had to do was something
slightly better than the time before that,
because no-one can jump that high
but everyone can take one small step.
Good fences make good astronauts.
You also might find yourself looking way down
thinking you could never fall that far,
but there's a part of all of us that's capable
of terrible things because all of us can do something
that's just a little bit worse than last time.
You can never do something terrible from a standing
position but you could take a step, no big deal.
But that's how bad things get done.
They get done the same way good things get done
one piece at a time, one day, one year,
one generation, one box, one coffin after another,
and then one day you might find yourself looking up
to where you used to be and realizing
you can't even see the light anymore.
The world is part good and part bad
and part of being alive is the journey to a place
where you can't believe how far you've gone.
That's the beauty of not being able to see in front of you,
and it's the curse as well, but that's just a part of life.
And wherever you are there's always a way out.
There's always tomorrow.
My world is made of many separate pieces and no matter
how I arrange them there's always a space.
I go places and I climb my life one step at a time
and there are 12 months and most of them are great
but there's always one that isn't.
And, it feels like you spend all year
climbing up only to slip back down,
and when you're living the good parts
you can't see the bad ones,
and when things are bad you can't believe in anything else,
and you tell yourself that you feel a lot
more than a lot of people and you can't leave yourself open
without being open to everything,
because everything is part good and part bad.
And, everything has a downside and you tell yourself
you can't worry about disappointing people
without caring about people,
and every day is one step closer to something better.
One day closer to freedom.
You can't be you without the imperfect parts
and the bad days and the gaps and the empty space.
It's the space that lets me move so freely,
one day and one idea to the next,
and the good parts are worth the bad ones.
And there's a downside of course,
when nobody is one thing all the time.
Everyone is made of separate parts
and sometimes people are equal parts good
and terrible and only some of the people see
the terrible parts and so everyone else thinks
they're only made of good.
But, even the worst parts of the world are good in some way,
yet it doesn't mean you should move there,
and some people are also a bad place to spend your time.
Even if it doesn't seem like it,
even if they're good to part of the people all of the time.
It's easy to think some people are all in one box
and others in another but one person is many boxes
and so are people in general, so is life,
and part of life is having to figure out
which pieces overshadow the others,
and what you're not seeing and how to not see
it everywhere once you do,
and then part of you is gonna need a drink and some music.
Some nights I'll be at a show and it's part rock
and part country and part unique
and there's always that one part of me
that thinks I could be an artist too.
Maybe, if I just practiced a little more every day,
and maybe there's a future phase of my life where I will,
but until then there's another part of me
that enjoys the magic of not knowing how it's done.
The magic of someone who's just one of a hundred people
in the room but can get all their attention
because a huge part of her needs self-expression,
and she probably used to look up at the stage
and think it was impossible to get all the way up there.
But, it wasn't impossible to play the guitar slightly better
than yesterday, and it wasn't impossible to need it
a little more every year, and now she's there
and we're here and this part of the world helps
you forget the rest of it, at least for tonight.
♪ The sun kissed path ♪
♪ Singing memories past ♪
♪ With the calm lake's glare ♪
- [Narrator] I think most people are good,
and there are a few in every room who aren't
but you can't have a world without everyone.
Just like you can't have freedom without other people
doing things with it, just like you can't have next week
without hope for the future
because you can't see it yet and it could be anything.
The freedom to not know the future lets us focus
on ourselves, and every day, and every year,
every generation is one step beyond the next,
one step wiser, and maybe one day you'll have kids
and they'll come to you and say that it's ridiculous
to focus on the differences between people,
when we're all made of the exact same parts.
And they'll say that it's okay to feel sad some of the time,
and they'll say that success is
when you help other people succeed too,
and they'll say that the best days are yet to come.
Starting at the bottom of their own staircase
they'll be so far from the mistakes their parents made
and it will be amazing to think you're separate
yet a part of each other, and like a new day each
generation might be a step towards a part of history
that always feels the way things
feel in the best parts of today.
♪ Way we go ♪
- [Safra] Every day is 24 hours and by the 24th of them
I'm ready for every part of me to be unconscious,
except the part that takes pieces
of the day and makes dreams of it.
Part of every day is hard to deal with,
part of every year, and a huge part of my life is
just trying to feel better before
and after a setback for myself or for humanity.
Trying to believe despite knowing that more bad days
will definitely follow,
trying to be happy with only being happy some of the time,
trying to glimpse hope
and then memorize what it looks like.
And even trying to feel like I have the right
to feel better when the world is composed
of so many different places
and I was just fortunate to be born into this one.
I write this stuff down, every day,
and there's a reason a journal has entries
and a book has chapters and a person has different sides
and a life has different phases.
And it's the same reason we have calendars
instead of nothing and centuries instead of being tied
to the past and stairs instead of the impossible,
and people who have the time to change
and grow and be so many different things.
Imagine a world where, faced with the infinite,
we find ways to manage, one day at a time,
one step at a time on the way to something greater.
Tomorrow is another world, just a few feet away
but far enough to always give you hope.
I hope I'll see you there.
(soft guitar music)