Tropi Girl’s Reviews > The Midnight Train > Status Update

‘Just try and live life like—’
The Dreamer smiled sadly. ‘Like it can’t be measured?’

‘You are still alive. Just asleep. It’s not too late for you.’

The incredibly annoying thing about being dead was that you got
all your priorities in order, just when it was too late to do anything
about them.

Wowwww yes.

‘I want kids.’
‘Now you do. Asleep on that bed in your honeymoon in Venice.
But things change. You change. And the amount you are away, and
the amount you are home late, it becomes increasingly improbable
anyway…’ The Ghost thought about this. ‘Maybe, Dreamer, you
are right. Maybe I still did want kids, deep down. But I was also
terrified of being a dad. I mean, I’d had no template.‘

‘I suppose that’s a start . . . At the time, you weren’t being honest with her. You didn’t know if you wanted children. Not really. You were scared. So you were unable to say the right thing. No matter what words you used, they couldn’t
ever sound right because you didn’t feel the loss that she was feeling.’

‘This idea we have that time is something linear and comes in
set units that we spend is very western . . . in a lot of traditional
African communities there is no abstract idea of the future. There
is no future at all . . ‘

‘The thing is,’ said the Ghost, ‘I spent our whole life never really
waking up. Now you’ll get a chance to.’

‘About the most common regrets of the dying. One
was wishing they hadn’t worked so hard. And the others were about
courage. The courage to be yourself, the courage to express your
feelings. They all seem related to letting go of fear. I have lived a
life in perpetual motion. I was stuck for ever in that car. Always
racing. I needed to realise that not every stop is a crash.

Because love slows you down. But slowing down is what you
should have done.’
The Ghost sighed as it all became so clear. To look around, that
was the best way to slow down. To live fully, that was the best way
to die. And he had failed on both counts. But now he was going to
make things better. He was going to give his young dreaming self
a chance.

Ultimately even love was weak against the desire to avoid pain.
Because what was love but another door into it. Better to keep
those doors closed. Better to stay on the train of work. Better to
aim for a stock-market flotation instead of happiness. Until, of
course, you actually die and realise the mistake you made. Until
you realise that most damage was caused by things escalating,
things spinning out of control.