Immortality

September. A dusty classroom. Desks covered with inked labels of rock bands and declarations of love. The teacher slouches in her chair – exhaustion in her eyes. She gazes into the distance, into the world beyond reality. A World Literature textbook – bought used – interprets the thoughts of the greatest minds, leaving no room for debate. Dostoevsky, the giant of darkness, the mighty philosopher, stares at you from the worn page. His lips move as if trying to tell you something.

October. The leaves on the trees behind the classroom window die. The grass covering the schoolyard dies. Everything dies. Everything fades, disappears, dissolves, becomes forgotten. Only the bearded man with his gloomy gaze stares at you from the page of the textbook – he exists outside of time.

You think about death – this unavoidable end of all. The oblivion, the instant amnesia of the world – the world moving forward without you, as if you’ve never existed. The sun shines in spring, birds fly in search of worms to feed their young, the sky is blue as ever, with cotton clouds moving north. People rush through the streets, cars honk, traffic lights change. Everything is as it was when you were alive. Nothing has changed. Except you are no longer part of the world.

It terrifies you – the oblivion – it terrifies you the most. What is the purpose of it all then? What is the point? But when you ask your older brother about it, he snorts and says, “Enough with the teenage maximalism already. Grow up. Get a job.” But you don’t think a job will give you the immortality you long for. And you start to doubt that anything will, until you find the answer, until the revelation strikes you like a lightning bolt. And you find it in the place you least expected – on the pages of the textbook: everything dies, but Dostoevsky is eternal.

It doesn't matter who is in power or who is in jail, what continents burn under the sun, or what species vanish. Despite inflation, political imbalance, and financial crisis; despite the fact that the average human attention span is 15 seconds, Dostoevsky remains. He discovered the way to immortality.

He is not the only one, of course. There were Alexander the Great and Napoleon, Catherine de’ Medici and Catherine the Great among many others who ruled and conquered. But Dostoevsky wasn’t a king or a murderer – he was a writer. He placed one word after another, one sentence after another, capturing the world as he perceived it. Words are accessible to everyone, even the most unfortunate beggar with a hungry dog.

You feel inspired; you decide to become like Dostoevsky. You tell your parents about it. They are shocked because they know the path of a writer is filled with tears and disappointment. You are not exactly sure how they know, but they do. They say, “No way, we will not support you for the rest of your life. Here’s an excellent college – there they will teach you a profession that guarantees a stable income. What you do in your spare time is up to you.”

But you are stubborn; you don’t go to college. Instead, you get a job at a fast-food restaurant. You cook French fries and grilled chicken and refill soda. You buy a stack of newsprint paper and a dozen purple ink pens, and at night, you write your immortal novel.

Writing turns out to be much harder than you imagined. You thought you’d sit at your desk and the words would pour out like Basmati rice from a torn canvas bag. You expected that each word would be a brilliant polished diamond, set in precious metal, sparkling and singing. You hoped that each sentence would contain immense power to impact a human life.

But instead, the words you long for get stuck somewhere between heaven and the keyboard, and you weep, searching for the right word. You fill yourself with cheap energy drinks and black coffee, you shuffle your feet in the darkness, stumbling into second-hand furniture your mom generously bought for you, seeking elusive inspiration. Just before sunrise, you collapse onto your spring mattress, exhausted, and wake up two hours later from the unpleasant sound of alarm – in agony. According to your beta readers, your novel is too romantic, too melodramatic, too verbose. According to your writing group, there are too many details in your story and not enough details. And Dostoevsky – his photo pinned to the wall looks at you with the same gloomy gaze. His beard shifts. He says, “Shall we go play cards instead?”

This is what you wanted, right? To write. And you write. After three drafts (not so bad – Leo Tolstoy rewrote War and Peace by hand seven times), you send your manuscript to one publishing house after another. Silence and rejections, rejections and silence. Each rejection chips away at your soul, piece by piece.

But you remember Stephen King’s quote, “Get a bigger nail.”

It’s March. You beat the system. Your manuscript has been accepted. It’s spring, the French fries are crisp, and the soda is hissing. Dreams become reality. You smile at Dostoevsky’s portrait with malicious joy, "You were saying?"

You can taste the fame on your tongue. You can almost touch a world of endless possibilities. Your words, your thoughts will live forever, for generations to come. Students, years from now, will sit in a dusty classroom. They will open the textbook and look at your portrait. They will envy you because you have found the way to immortality.

Except there are no requests for interviews, no invitations to read your novel at book festivals. When you tell someone you are a published author, they say, “That’s great, man. Can you pick up my shift on Sunday?”

After work, you go to a public library to rent a movie. You stumble upon a mountain of used books for sale. You look at the titles. So many authors have not made it to the top. So many, and you don’t recognize a single name on the covers.

Not even your own.

The End