A Fresh Start

Outside snow comes down heavily through the dark. Falling gracefully down, its slow dance-like descent only made visible by the orange light of the streetlamps that permeated the night. Inside an office building a man is finishing up his work. He glances at the clock to see that both the needles are facing the ceiling; midnight 12:00 “Guess it's Sunday now.” He says out loud to himself. He’s the last one there. He turns off the computer and picks up the folders of paper he'll be taking home with him and puts them into his briefcase. “It's a good thing I have no one to miss me.” He speaks out loud again. He was in one of those thoughtful moods where everything hits a little harder and life sort of looks at you different, or maybe, you look at it different. He looks around at the empty desks where his co-workers lived during the day, each with their individual style of house plants, pictures, paper holders and so on… Then he looks down at his own empty little cubicle. He had not wanted any piece of him there, so he kept it a very utilitarian little box that he existed in on workdays. But since he himself spent all his time there, he found it had ended up having the opposite effect; it made him into a little empty man, devoid of his own character, just like that desk.

 He picked up his briefcase and started walking to the elevator. This day was one of many he had been in this mood. He was having one of those weeks, of those months, where everything seems meaningless because you start to lose the perspective you had originally on life, a perspective that may have been wrong. You start to question your priorities, because you see that they may not lead to where you thought they would. This contemplative, emotional numbness to the world, had somehow made him acutely aware of things he wouldn't normally have noticed; the way the tan carpet looked against the white plastered walls in the dark; the un-unique pictures on the wall; the faux plants. It all seemed to emphasize why he hated his life.

 He stood there at the elevator door staring at the little buttons thinking about how many times he had just pressed them without thinking. Then he noticed something for the first time, the smell. The smell of the whole office building. It made him nauseous. But why? What made him hate it? “It characterizes this place. It represents it. It is its essence.” He thought. It was the smell of old coffee mixed with the smells of various cleaning supplies, and something else, what else? It was the smell of the people. Each with their individual scent made of their cleaning articles: some women’s shampoo, deodorant, and perfume. The boss’s strong cologne, after-shave, and bodywash. And the smell that comes off their clothes; Tide Febreze, and any other detergent and/or fabric softeners they might use. All these individual smells mixed and combined with the bigger smell of coffee to create your usual office smell, with only minor distinctions that characterize that building specifically. The smell that clings to the walls, clings to your clothes, your hair. Even once you leave it stays on you, that smell. You don’t notice it anymore, but other people do. It’s on you, it is you, and you become a piece of this office, no longer separate from it, branded by it. You, a piece of it, the same way it became a piece of you the day you decided to donate or trade over half of your life to that building.

 By now he had pushed the elevator button and made it to the first floor. As he walked slowly, thoughtfully up to the final door, the usual industrial glass exterior door that out-looks a big parking lot, now covered in snow, he noticed how he smelled. He still had a hint of deodorant and cologne left from this morning, but with a new smell that was slowly growing stronger on him. The smell of man, of human; his sweat, his life. Something, the one thing in this place he felt was natural. Normally he would just think “I need to shower.” But right then there was something reassuring about it; the unforced nature; something as it was supposed to be, almost.

He stood there looking out the door thinking, thinking about work. He looked out at the snow, how clean it all was, still undefiled by people, driving cars, traffic. He watched as it fell under the light, and some part of him fell with it. Some part of him longed to be part of it, of the clean, white, snow. Falling gracefully, naturally down. Clean, pure, white, natural, simple.

He put the briefcase down and loosened his tie. He thought about how it was choking him, like his life, his work, this place, all wrapped around his neck choking him! A sudden burst of anger overtook him and he forcefully ripped the tie off and threw it into a corner behind him. He calmed back down, still thinking about life. “I hate my life. Why do I hate my life?” As he stood there watching the snow fall his thoughts came back to his work. Work was all he did. Was all he cared about. But he didn't, he didn't care about his job, just the daily security it provided him, direction.

Then he saw himself in the reflection of the window. He noticed his coat, a black trench coat, open with his suit visible underneath. Suddenly the coat seemed to him like the tie, the job, just a façade. Choking, and covering who he really was. Just like the job the coat was useless. It seems to overheat him when he was too warm and never heat him when he was cold, it was all just for looks. In the same way the job was useless. The job which was supposed to give him purpose and fulfillment, but all it did was take away his identity while robbing him of his time. Suddenly he looked down at his belt; “Time” he thought. "This belt is all the time this job demands of me! Slowly getting tighter and tighter, taking more and more of my time from me, always getting tighter, never getting looser. Squeezing me. My free time gets skinnier and skinnier, anorexic, until there is no free time, and all that's left is this belt; all the life I have left is for work, for the job! Yeah, when your free time is no more, then you are the job!” He took off his coat and suit at the same time, held them out between his index finger and thumb. He looked at them with disgust before dropping them onto his briefcase. Then he undid his belt and added it to the growing pile. He untucked his shirt from his pants and unbuttoned the first three buttons of the shirt from along his neck, so he could really breathe, so he could really think. His thoughts returned to the snow outside. It was so clean, fresh, new. “Has the snow ever fallen quite this softly before? No, I don't think so. It's all new. But maybe it's just me that's really seeing it for the first time. I want to be clean like that snow. I want to feel fresh and new, no longer fed up with my life… I wish. I'd like to feel that snow, really feel it! I’d like to be free again, like when I was a boy. Free again! Maybe I will.”

He stood there staring at the snow as it fell. Thoughtless for the first time in a while. Just living in the moment, as he witnessed each little miracle of snow fall on the growing pad of white that draped everything outside. Unaware of anything but the tiny dance of each flake weaving its way gracefully down the path of least resistance through the atmosphere.

After a while he came back from falling with the snowflakes. His thoughts returned to himself, his life, his problems, his unhappiness. He looked down at his shoes and was struck with how every part of him seemed to portray the thing he was growing to hate more and more each moment. He said out loud “Why, everything reminds me of this office! This job! I have made it my life, and I want to change shoes! These damn shoes! I was so excited when I bought them, these stupid black Johnston and Murphy Cormac wing tip slip-ons! Beautiful shoes, but in the end I’ve only used them to come to work, for my co-workers to see every day, for this office building! Just like the rest of the pile; these shoes are just a part of tricking, trapping me! I get the job so I can get these shoes, and then I use them to walk into work every day! The search for money has consumed my life! But this career, these goals, they were never my own! It was handed to me by those around me doing the bidding for this invisible beast! If I keep going I'll end up like them; perpetuating this kind of life I lead in others, eventually my own children. But does it make me happy? Do I like it? No! I just do it! I do it because it tricked me; the lie told me that if I give this job all my time, it would give me enough money to do what I want to. It was an unfair trade! And I didn't see till just now: this job, this career path, has taken my time, my years, for the promise of money! All the while I never realized, if I sold my time, my soul, my dreams, I'd have no use for the money it offers me, for these shoes!”

 He put the toe of his left shoe over the heel of the right shoe and slipped his foot out, then with the sock covered toes of his right foot he slipped his left foot free. Then he pushed the shoes with the side of his foot, into the little pile of “career” he had made of his briefcase, coat, and tie. He took off his socks and set them on top of the pile.

After a while of staring at the falling snow again he said out loud to himself. “I hate my life! Every day I either think about my work; what I’ve got to get done, or how much I hate my life. Why do I go on like this? My life has become a burden that's no longer worth carrying to live this way. So, I won't! I won't do it anymore! This kind of life is not worth it! Life is too short to waste dying and I am dying. Every day I put on these clothes, come to work, walk through this door, and sit at my desk…I die! A piece of who I am dies and is replaced with a mindless effort to live this life I hate. If I keep this up soon there will be no part of me, who I am, alive anymore! I'll just be a total zombie going about work every day, lifeless. I already am most days! I'm going to end my life as I know it, the way I've been living it is too unsatisfying!”

“What if when I leave this building, step out this door, I do it for the last time? What if I just never came in here again? End life as I know it by changing it, change everything! Go find something that makes me feel alive again. And leave some other poor bastard the opportunity of a lifetime, to be sucked dry of himself, his time. All so that he can have this career, this job I have. What if? I could be like that snow; drifting through the atmosphere, not pushed by anything but my own desires and what makes me happy.” And as he thought about it, the thought became more and more obvious as the only solution to his life. He knew he had to go and find happiness or die, die the slow death of a man who hates his life, so he kills himself, his personality, his desires, so that he can keep living the life the way he “has to” as he sees it. He sacrifices himself for his career, and never knows another way. He suspects that there is one, another way, but he never looks farther than the office window to go find it. He picks the job, and the career, over his own soul, personality, and happiness.

He thought about the clean, fresh snow, yet untouched by man, businessman, and he wanted to be clean from his life too, like that snow, fresh, and new, he wanted a fresh start to build a life he could grow and not shrink, shriveling, dying. A life where he came alive, where he remembered who he was, where he had a personality again. He looked out at the snow falling softly and slowly decided something that would change his life forever.

 He put his hand on the cold door and pushed it open. Slowly he stepped out, still thinking and still watching the snow fall in front of him. He stood there on the cold, bare, concrete, that was still untouched by the snow because of the overhanging roof. As the door quietly closed behind him he looked out into the snow and felt the cool night air push against his cheek in the form of a breeze. It was lightly hitting him with those little snowflakes, those pure little coveted flakes of snow, and he thought. He thought about looking back just to see the door, his stuff, that awful stuff that reminded him of his job. But he didn't turn. Because even to look back would be too big a gesture, some form of fidelity to that old life, and he wouldn't, he owed it nothing! So, he didn't look back, instead he put his left barefoot forward and stepped heavily off the covered pavement into the deep snow. It felt good at first, cooling his hot feet, and the rush of the quick temperature change added to the idea that it really was cleaning him of his old self as he walked away from that old life. 20-30 steps in, it started to really sting, but the sting was nothing compared to the peace he felt every step he took farther away from that building! Cold. So cold. But what was physical pain when there was no more emotional pain? He didn’t know yet what he would do, where he would find his own sense of happiness, but he was going to find it! For every step farther away the pain was overwhelmed two fold with the sense of freedom and peace he had! The pain was worth the freedom!

The next morning as the first person arrived, walking through the parking lot, they were confused by the bare footprints left in the snow leading away from the building, and as they walked up to the door they noticed his pile of work things, and they were a little startled. What they didn’t know was what that pile represented; the old skin of a past human/life that was shed. Like a reptile is made new and glossy, no longer restrained from growth by the old skin, so was this man. Soon rumors spread about why he had quit so suddenly. Though they all subconsciously knew and understood exactly why he had done it, envied it even. But life went on, the gossip stopped, and people forgot. The “new guy” wasn’t new anymore and life went back to normal, forgetting that that man had ever worked there. But far away in a cabin sitting on the coast of Alaska, under dark evergreens and the aurora, where winter snow was abundant and always fell fresh and clean, lived that man. No, it was not that man, it was a new man, a happy man. Who had escaped certain emotional death and built a life for himself, a life that he could really be happy in.