The above photo, posted by friends on his Facebook page, was taken of fourteen-year-old Dylan Alkins just days before he was tragically swept out to sea in a recent storm.
It's a haunting and beautiful image of a young man who dared to live dangerously, confronting the waves and the elements and laughing in a state of ecstatic happiness. Doubtless there will be those who will shake their heads and talk about the foolishness of youth. And, obviously, it's not sensible to stand at the edge of a pier when sixty-mile-an-hour winds are blowing and giant waves are crashing all around.
But, whether they like to admit such or not, there is something heroic in Dylan's paradoxically death-defying and death-affirming foolishness and I believe that his was a true practice of joy before death; that is to say, a fatal game via which a young man sought to transfigure and transcend a dull individual existence.
He might have taken precautions; but instead he took a risk. And I admire him for that and even, in a sense, envy him.
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