There were two streetlights every block and the faint blur of activity at the few stores that were still open that late. He opened his window and let the night breeze hit his face savoring a few moments of tranquil in the otherwise chaotic world. As he looked at the road ahead he tried not to think about where he was going; he turned into another vaguely familiar street, and wondered why all the roads looked the same. There was a tune playing on the car’s stereo, one that sunk in with ease into his thoughts…

I see trees of green…….. red roses too
I see em bloom….. for me and for you
And I think to myself…. what a wonderful world.

I see skies of blue….. clouds of white
Bright blessed days….dark sacred nights
And I think to myself …..what a wonderful world.

He thought to himself if that wonderful world Louie Armstrong was crooning about was out there somewhere, if the same road he was travelling would take him there. As the song continued to play, his thoughts shifted briefly to reality, what he needs to do in the next hour, the next morning, the next evening. He lived in a place where time only existed one day at a time, and it was almost criminal to be wondering beyond his allotted scale. His attention span over the years had dwindled to a mere fifteen minutes, after which his mind would seek another chore, another challenge, or another interaction. He was not always like that, there were times when he could sit and read a book for eight hours without thinking about anything else. The world had got to him, his decisionmaking was becoming more machinistic, in the last two years he was depending more on quantifiable trade-offs and compromises than his gut.

He floored the pedal for a few seconds hoping to get another big whiff of that cool air. From the corner of his eye, he caught a late night taco stand, one of those deliciously unhygenic places where the blue collars would stop before heading home. He quickly made a list of pros and cons, evaluated three different decision trees, and moved on – all in the blink of an eye. He told himself that instant gratification is only but instant. As he drove on, he realized the unfamiliarty of the area, he tried to take in the prominent establishments hoping to create a mental map if he were to travel back on the same road. As the houses along the street got nicer, and the lawns looked greener and the parked cars appeared more expensive, he wondered how life would be in one of them. A nice house, a pretty wife, smart kids, modestly expensive cars, few debts; would he still be doing midnight excursions wondering where the road would lead, wondering if the asphalt is the same color after every turn. Maybe he would feel more content, a little more satisfied, a little more melancholic, maybe his thoughts would be more constrained, more attuned to the baser aspects of life. As he wound down his little role-play, he peered into the rear view mirror; he stared into it for a good ten seconds almost irreverent of the road ahead. As he turned his gaze back to the road ahead, his heart sank and he felt like he had died a little more on that day. The road ahead looked exactly the same as the road behind.