GOAT

“It’s imperative that you understand this: these things you’re getting hung up on? These things you call favorites, and epic, and greatest-of-all-times? These things you hold up as perfect examples of this or that? They’re all just snapshots, moments frozen in time, and it’s time that has passed. Preserved in amber like a prehistoric mosquito. Beautiful, certainly, but completely dead and useless in any present situation.”

He stared at me, so I sipped my coffee without breaking eye contact. He blinked first.

“What’s imperative mean?” he asked.

“Important,” I said. “Really, really fucking important.” He frowned, his brows knotting up in frustration. “Look,” I said, “I’m not trying to tell you that having this favorite movie or claiming that some obscure comic book—”

“Manga,” he corrected.

“—manga, whatever, is the best of all time is a bad thing. It’s not. It’s good to know what you like, and ultimately these things can reveal much about who you think you are. What I’m saying is that those things are dead to the present. For all you know there could be way better things that would easily replace these so-called ‘bests’ with in a heartbeat. Obscure stuff in some distant corner of another country, in another language, from another culture. You just don’t know. So, I’m cautioning you to be careful about settling for what you know as though nothing greater could possibly exist. Because, in all likelihood, it does.”

2014.09.20 – 2023.05.16

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