Meaning of Life

I will return this library book, Tom thought to himself. No, I am returning this book today. Today, I am returning this book. Today, I am returning this book.

He repeated the phase in his mind as he worked shampoo onto his scalp for the first time this week. It wasn’t so bad. The week starts on Sunday, so having a full shower today meant he was off to a great start. Perfect day to return a library book. Start the week out right.

He seemed to have picked a good therapist this time, and she was doing wonders for him. He wished he’d heard about cognitive behavioral therapy before. If he’d heard about it during his stay in the hospital, maybe his condition would have improved faster.

Tom had sustained a concussion three months ago in a minor car accident. The insurance company had been fair, but it still seemed like a huge kick in the nuts from the universe or god or whoever. In fact, everything had started to feel that way, and his entire life just seemed pointless. He thought near death experiences were supposed to give a person purpose, but that was just it, wasn’t it? The car accident hadn’t been a near death experience, it’d just be another bad occurrence in another bad day of his eventless life. Where was his wake-up notification? His call to action, destiny, purpose?

No, he thought. Start over. Start over. I make my own destiny. I make my own choices. I make my own life. Today, I am returning this book.

---

It had all seemed like too much, and just two weeks after the accident, he’d found himself spiraling out. He called in sick to work, pretending he might have picked up something during his check-up at the hospital. He was starting to wonder about the validity of a “mental health day.” The problem was this didn’t feel like anything he had heard co-workers describe when they confessed to calling out due to stress, life, whatever. This felt like the crushing realization that it all truly was pointless. Why are we even here? This spreadsheet doesn’t matter, this meeting doesn’t matter, who even is this client anyway and what do they stand for? Why am I here? Money?

What is the point of anything?

Tom had panicked. Standing in his kitchen, post-phone call to his boss about being too sick to come in, he tried googling “meaning of life” and “how to feel sane when nothing matters” and other similar anxious thoughts, hoping for a solution that would help him snap out of it. With surprising, except not-so-surprising quickness, targeted advertising started recommending he seek therapy. Tom scoffed. Therapy. He closed the browser on his phone and opened the fridge. I don’t need therapy, I need breakfast. Just take a deep breath and this will all go away. A day off is fine. Just got to remember why I took this job in the first place.

Except he couldn’t. Or, he did remember, but he didn’t feel like that new car/home/retirement was all that important anymore. What did it all mean? Why bother? Why bother at all?

Ok, therapy.

As he started trying to get help, things got worse. His first therapist had wondered aloud why Tom hadn’t confronted all this as a teenager. Well, Tom admitted, it was easy to shove all that down by focusing on the next steps. Graduating, getting out of the house, into college, into a job, into life, the real life, the big leagues, getting rich and mattering, finally. But now, he’d realized that was a lie.

The therapist recommended a few books, and that was how Tom ended up with this one in particular that was overdue. The others hadn’t held his interest, so he’d returned them before the depression really dug its claws in, but this one he’d kept, even after discontinuing sessions with the therapist who recommended it.

Things seemed to matter less and less as Tom continued to bang his head against the wall. No one was getting it. Nothing mattered, and nothing anyone said to him was fixing this one simple truth. And as his will to live washed down the drain, so did his energy for returning this book, and now it was overdue.

---

Freshly showered and shaved, Tom was feeling unusually good about today. He was looking forward to not having this overdue book hanging in the back of his mind anymore. He visualized himself feeling lighter this week, smiling more, accomplishing tasks easier knowing that this one task would already be done. He inhaled momentum and exhaled stress. He released any negative energy from the past and relaxed his shoulders and headed into the kitchen.

He was confronted with the mess of the previous week. He might have done the dishes and cleaned the kitchen yesterday, if he hadn’t been so tired. Instead, he’d used the time to catch up on TV and scroll through social media.

It hadn’t been a total waste of time. Tom had found a new page to follow that posted regularly and had content that he knew he could really benefit from. Honestly, there wasn’t any better use for social media than reprograming your mind, and the page offered new positive affirmations every day. He’d scrolled their entire history while binging a show he’d probably never tell his friends about, one of the ones where a team comes in and totally changes a person’s life while telling them how awesome they are – they just don’t let themselves know it.

But the kitchen was still a mess. A week-long mess.

It was just after nine thirty, and the library didn’t open until noon.

Well, Tom thought, I have time right now. And a bit of momentum. I want to keep that going.

Forty-five minutes later, the remaining clean dishes were put away, the dishwasher was loaded, the counters were wiped down, floor swept, trash taken out, and he felt pretty good. Satisfied, maybe. He started the dishwasher and water began to flow out the bottom onto the floor.

There is no point to anything! Tom thought.

He opened the dishwasher and the flow of water stopped.

Tom took a deep breath and checked inside the cabinet under the sink. No water there. He turned on the faucet and waited, still nothing. Ok, just the dishwasher. He didn’t want to have to deal with it when he got back from the library. The library still wasn’t open anyway. Should he deal with it now? Why did he have to deal with it in the first place? Couldn’t anything go his way, ever?

He groaned and stared up at the ceiling, remembering something he’d read the night before. Maybe this was just the universe or whatever trying to prepare him. He considered the alternatives and his energy levels. If he hadn’t cleaned the kitchen, what would he be doing? Lying in bed still? ‘Chilling,’ supposedly, a.k.a. drowning in his own mind. He didn’t want to go back there. Today was his day. Today was supposed to matter.

He looked back at the dishwasher. If it hadn’t happened today, it might’ve happened tomorrow, on a work day. If it had to happen, maybe today was ok. It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet. He grabbed a towel and mopped up the water on the floor. He could call someone, and at least initiate the process to get it fixed.

He was no stranger to phone calls but was surprised to get ahold of someone, someone who could come out today, in fact! Thrilled with is luck, Tom hung up the phone and started washing the dishes by hand. Had to keep that momentum going. The technician arrived and, after taking a look, explained that they’d have to order a part and be back next week. Well, Tom thought, at least that’s something, and at least it’s moving forward. I can call that a win.

Decidedly satisfied, Tom checked the clock. He still had a bit of time before the library opened, but was eager to get moving. He decided he’d stop at a nearby local café to grab a snack on the way.

---

When the man in line at the café in front of him collapsed on the ground, Tom’s first aid training kicked in. No breathing, no pulse, so he asked someone to call an ambulance and started CPR. With the fifth compression his arms passed through the body and he fell face first toward the floor, and dove into darkness. He tumbled through the air and a rush of color flashed before his eyes before he felt solid ground beneath him. It was a tiled floor, but not the same one from the café. This one was white and the silence surrounding him was deafening until a voice broke it.

“Oh you’re not supposed to be here,” someone said. “Except that you want to be here, so, I guess, welcome.”

Tom looked up. The entity before him was intangible enough that he had to be somewhere impossible, terrible – this can’t be happening, he thought.

It was a shape, sort of, with a head and several arms, shifting shades of light and dark. It was both peaceful and horrifying, difficult to look at but also hard to make out due to the shifting light on it, through it, from it.

“Why am I here?” Tom said.

“You fell willingly into the open space we used to take that man to the ‘Afterlife.’ So now it’s your turn as well.”

“That never happens. We would hear about serial deaths being a regular occurrence if that was true. This is a dream. This isn’t real.”

“You’re right that this doesn’t happen often, but you were just so ready not to exist anymore, so here you are.”

“That’s not true!” Tom said. “I was getting better! I am better! I cleaned my kitchen today and I’m returning this library book,” he said, looking at the floor where he had dropped the book to do CPR. It wasn’t there.

“You know those mundane, empty statements don’t matter. ‘I cleaned the kitchen. I’m returning this book.’ I’m older than anything you’ve ever known,” the entity said. “And this is your end.”

“Angels aren’t scary. This isn’t real. I’m dreaming. This is a nightmare.”

“I’m no angel. This isn’t a nightmare. The only reason why you’re scared is because instinctually, on the deepest level, you understand what I am. This is your end. It’s time. You wanted it to happen.”

“No,” Tom said. He stood. “If there was a way for me to get in here, there is a way for me to get out, and I’m going back. We hear about that all the time, people coming back.”

He ran.

The space was unending whiteness. His steps made no sound. He never felt fatigued, but time did pass and still nothing changed. His surroundings remained the same. Nothing. He stopped running, and the entity was there at his side.

“It’s time.”

“No!” He felt a surge run through him as if his blood pressure had spiked.

“The book doesn’t matter,” the entity said. “You don’t matter. You’ve already realized the truth. This moment is a blip in the extent of the universe, and it’s over. It’s time.”

Tom felt the energy rise in him with every word the entity said. This wasn’t over. Tom wasn’t over. He shook his head and he felt the gesture in his soul, complete and total denial of the entity’s words, the entity’s power, the entity itself. How dare this thing try to take him? Tom felt as though his rising emotion might literally lift him off the ground, and it could have been just anger but it wasn’t. It was the sum of every endless night of the past three months in anguish. It was the cumulative total of every morning of hollowness. It was the fear of the true and final end of him. It was a desire for more and knowing, believing, hoping that he deserved a second chance.

And Tom would make it happen.

“I make my own destiny. I make my own choices. I make my own life, and today, I am returning this book!”

The book appeared in his hands.

The entity conjured a library’s book basket. “Wonderful. Deposit that here.”

Tom stared at the book in his hands. “I can create things.”

“Sure. Now return the book and your mission will be complete.”

“No,” Tom said. He felt a fire swell within him. He would use it. “I must return it for real. I live for me. I show up for myself. How I see myself and what I do with my time matters. I own my life. I’m not going down without a fight.”

A flaming sword appeared in one of his hands. The book remained in the other.

“All this for a book?” the entity said.

“All this for my right to live and return it.”

“This is pointless,” the entity said. “But have it your way.”

The entity spread its many arms wide. Wider. Wider still until the entity split into two. Four. Ten, surrounding Tom. The ground under Tom’s feet rose as if a mountain were forming underneath him. As he was raised thousands of feet in the air, the entities stayed level with him. The surface he stood on rose higher and his standing space grew smaller, until he was on a narrow, flat peak of an immensely steep mountain.

“No room for footwork,” Tom said.

He conjured wings for himself and darted upward, out of the circle of entities. Startled, they floated backwards. They chased him. Tom turned and slashed at the nearest entity. It caught fire and burned up. Four other entities seized Tom, two at his wings and two at his feet. He slashed them all and took off again, trying to put some distance between himself and the remaining five.

What else can I conjure, he thought. They were vulnerable to fire, and four of them weren’t real. Could he conjure a whole wall of fire? A better question: were any of them real? Tom looked over his shoulder. There was nothing but whiteness. He stopped and looked around and saw nothing.

“You can create whatever you want,” the voice of the entity said, “but that will only delay the inevitable.”

Tom conjured a platform and sat. He looked at the items he held, book in one hand, sword in the other.

“I can create whatever I want,” he said.

He closed his eyes. If I fell out of my reality, I can fall back in. He made himself weightless and thought, I create my reality. He focused on the lighting of the café, the art on the walls, the sound of the machines behind the counter, the bell at the door, the voice of the barista, the smell of the coffee, the people in line in front of him, the feel of the floor beneath his knees and the compressions he made against the dying man’s chest. He felt it.

He felt it.

He opened his eyes and kept going. He saw the man on the floor he’d been trying to help, and compressed his chest to the beat of a song that had been suggested in his CPR class. Tom was back, but he couldn’t think about that. He had to see if he could keep blood flowing for the other person.

Paramedics arrived to relive him, but the man was pronounced dead on the scene.

The paramedics walked Tom away from the body and draped a blanket around his shoulders. He couldn’t seem to catch his breath, and felt dizzy. They made him lay down on the floor and elevated his feet.

“No,” a paramedic said to him. “You are alive, and you did your best.”

“What?” Tom said.

“You didn’t die. You’re alive, and you did your best.”

“Why are you saying that?”

“Because you keep saying that you died. You didn’t die.”

Tom said nothing. His breaths were coming easier now. He was alive. He had done it.

A paramedic rolled a second stretcher toward them.

“Wait,” Tom said, “If I’m alive, why are you–“

“We’ll need to take you to the hospital to give you some fluids and make sure you’re ok.”

---

They kept Tom for a few hours, but discharged him from the hospital later that day. He had less than an hour before the library closed.

He called a cab to get back to the café. The barista gave him his overdue book and a look of pity, which he didn’t have time for. He rode in the cab to the library and arrived just in time to see one of the librarians step outside, locking up for the night.

“Wait!” Tom called, “Please, I have to return this today!”

The woman finished locking the door and turned to Tom. “Is that one of ours? You can drop it in the slot there, 24 hours,” she said. There was a gold-plated slot on the side of the building, with a sign above that said RETURNS HERE.

“Oh,” Tom said.

“It won’t be late, I’ll get it in the morning,” she said.

“Oh it’s late,” Tom said.

“Really? Then why insist on getting it here before closing?”

Tom thought a moment, the question turning into the road of questions he had so often traveled down. Why return it today? Why return it at all? Why even exist? Why: anything? He took a deep breath and recalled the lessons of the book he was returning. “No other reason but the one reason we all have in common,” he said. “For one’s own satisfaction.”

“Hmm. And, The Great Meaning of Life,” she said, gesturing to the book in his hands. “What is it?”

“You’ll have to tell me,” Tom said. “What is the meaning of your life?”