WAKING UP TO LIFE

Some time ago, a woman with a gun in her hand demanded of me and my companions that we provide good reasons why life is worth living. Otherwise she was going to terminate us.

I thought to myself: This is the very question that I've struggled with for so long and now I am being forced to provide a definitive answer. Do I make up some fancy reason and thus escape with my life? But if I lie, then my life is not really worth pursuing.

How many times have I dreamed and read about this kind of a life-and-death situation and convinced myself that I thoroughly understood it, assumed that I knew exactly what it felt like. And now finally it has happened for real and this time I cannot wake up nor close the book.
  
I realise that we all have to go some day, but what a pity it would be to go on a brilliantly sunny day like this, when the whole world is pulsating with life and every cell of my body is screaming out with the desire to live. How much more fitting it would be to leave on a cloudy, sunless day with the sky shedding cold tears.
  
No, this doesn't feel like the right time to die! But when is the right time to die? How can one tell that one has accomplished all that one can accomplish on this Earth?
 
To make the most of my existence, I really should try to cram it all in, all of my life, into these last few remaining minutes, the way that I used to try to squeeze in all of the information just before the start of the exams. Now is the time to live my life to the fullest degree, like I never bothered to before.
  
Yet this fear of death that I am feeling right now is out of all proportion to the joy and satisfaction that life has brought me so far. Why does my life seem so dear and precious to me now? Is it because only now, on the threshold of death, does the vision of ideal life appear to me, life free of all the illusions that have previously brought me down, illusions that only the proximity of 'The End' can destroy?

Is it because that only now can I see life as it really is, free of all the grime that besmirches its true visage, free of all the trivial annoyances that make life so hard to bear in day-to-day existence?
  
It is as if during the day of my existence, life concealed her features with dowdy garb and only now, as the midnight approaches, does she shed her frumpy dress and stands before me in all of her natural, radiant, shining glory.

  
In the distance, I saw my friends getting finished off -- obviously their answers weren't good enough. Almost certainly they all used the "My life is unique" defence and it didn't work.
 
Should I make my reasons stand out from theirs? But I am a person just like them. Wouldn't making my reasons more striking imply that my life is more valuable? Surely we all live for pretty much the same reasons and so my answer should be identical to theirs.
 
But what does the tormentor want from us? Honest, straightforward replies or singular, elaborate explanations? How can one justify one's existence? Where does one begin?

I have no need nor reason to justify my past for it is already gone and she can't take it away from me. Nor can I justify my future for it hasn't yet occurred and is therefore of completely intangible and unknown nature. It follows then that I am only in a position to justify the now, the immediate moment during which I am alive.

 

Should I appeal to her humanity, her compassion? But what is morality, what is conscience but some intangible, nebulous substance that we can  only hope has found a safe refuge in the breast of fellow man.

 

It was now my turn. I came in and faced the interrogator. In a voice devoid of any tone she commanded me to present my case.

"Life is hard, really hard sometimes", I replied to her, "and a lot of times I don't want to go on struggling against the unyielding, overpowering forces. Yet I want to continue living. That is all I can say. I want to live."

The interrogator gazed at me with an empty look, a look lacking any human expression, deciding on her answer.

Just as she was about to make her pronouncement, I woke up to life.

Reviews

[Bella Marie]

In the distance, I saw my friends getting finished off -- obviously their answers weren't good enough. Almost certainly they all used the "My life is unique" defence and it didn't work.

I thought perhaps you could change (I saw my friends getting finished off)..to me it doesnt if in with the flow...but that is just me!!

This piece gets you thinking, it is quite unique and leaves it all up to ones own interpretation...is this the piece that was published?

I did enjoy the read, thankyou for sending it to me.

Bella
XXX

[Solst Rapture]

An excellent, clear philosophical story about enlightenment. It is a commonly fantasized dilemma, but that fact does not detract from the essence of optimism this story instills in the reader.

The responses it has provoked are interesting, from one reviewer in particular. Did you NOT have fun writing this? What could you have been doing with your time? Anything? So then why is one thing any more beneficial than another...I should not react in this way, but It is clear some sort of hounding is going on. I can only assume their is a greater relationship that transcends these electronic stages?

[Siddartha Beth Pierce]

I like your revelation at the end. This sadly reminds me of the Colombine High School shootings...that is what it brought up in my head as I read the scenario you set forth. Still, we truly know not whether you came out of this unscathed. That is alright - I like the open-ended nature of the piece. Thank you.
Light,
Siddartha

[Legion]

Thought provoking. We are all on the verge of death, but very few of us take the time to realize that. Why? Fear of the unknown or the inevitable perhaps. That or we are uncomfortable with our own mortality that it pains us to see it. Who knows? If given the chance (like or unlike the one presented in your piece), how would we percieve that mortality with its definitive past or its unfiltered future? Everyone is different in that perspective, but in the end we all end the same. Good write.

[Winter McPherson]

A philosophical treatise on the value of life over death set in a suspense story. Original.

[Toni Prehoda Kahler]

I like this drama, I like what it takes for you to wake up - the death threat. I like that in this piece the elephant is no longer gallumphing around the living room unnoticed, or disguised. - you are speaking it out loud in questions, and story. We live under the threat daily, all of us, but mostly we try not to think about it, and therefore we make up excuses, or practice daily escapes.

paragraph 4: I know exactly what you mean.

I have never felt or believed that death has rights to me, that I must do as she asks, even if she has a gun.

Things have gone awry here on the blue planet (CS Lewis influence). "I want to live" is a mantra hummed by all things alive, it seems to me. Movement is toward life, not away from it, for the most part (always exceptions to add to confusion), and moments pull me upward, even the spires of trees direct me "farther up and further in". I like how you circle directly back to the title.

Who is the tormentor? And what would the interrogator have said? (does she really have any humanity or compassion? - Paragraph 14) This seems compelling to me. I want to know who all the players are and what their characters reveal.....This is only part of the story....I have read/heard many versions of it. Are we standing in front of an executioner or a lifegiver?

[Wildfleour]

Well, I am like you - I love life and understand that there will be good and bad (ying and yang). For what is life without death and what is death without life? Would we appreciate joy if we never felt sorrow?

[Sara]

This was fun too! I like the philosophy in all of your writing...and i think you did a good job with pondering the question and building up suspense. the ending was a little anti-climactic, but there really is no known answer that could be better, i guess it was just left up to the reader to decide what they would say in that situation...
anyway, i really like your writing style.
-sara :-)

[Azaradelle]

Wow, extremely thought inspiring, as everything i've read of yours is.
Ignoring everything Gary Alexander (my editor) said - i never listen to him, though sometimes i think i should stop rebelling - i'd like to think there is no one purpose, no ONE true meaning to life.
We're all unique in our own way, and thus have our own perspectives on the matter. People have their own reasons for waking up each morning.
Some live to help others by becoming firemen, or doctors, or volunteers at charity organisations. Others live for a higher being, doing all that is asked of them in the hope to achieve eternal paradise after death. Some you will find live to reproduce, to find their one true 'soul-mate' and create a loving family etc.
Of course, I am not generalizing, for there are many more views human beings have other than the ones I have stated above. These are merely examples.
It is a matter of opinion, the only one true answer lies within yourself. Why do you live? What makes you want to get out of bed? What drives you? Is it worth it?
You CAN answer all these questions, not by looking at the world or others in general, but by looking within yourself, as an individual.

*End rant*

I'm not even going to bother re-reading what i just wrote. Though i'd be very surprised if it made any sense.
All in all, a very enjoyable read.
The last line was the cherry on the top.

Excellent.

Yrs.

Azaradelle.

[Gary Alexander Azerier]

At my stage of this "game" I can only say to you that so, so many thinking young people have traversed this philosophical route before you...I suppose that's the "fun" of it all...but it ALWAYS adds up to the same minimal, nominal, sum: Not much. Life is life...it ends in death...no one...NO ONE really KNOWS (they may think they know...they may BELIEVE...) what lies beyond...and what the purpose of it all is here. We can only: Do the best we can here...do our best NOT to harm others...be productive...perhaps leave some legacy...a token, something. But, Boris, for me, a man who has lived a bit, tried and experienced much, and thought plenty about it, let me honestly tell you...because I believe you are sincere and searching, THERE ARE NO ANSWERS! At the end...we perish. That's it! So, for me to read about some silly woman who brandishes a pistol and threatens someone else's life...because SHE wants answers (answers NONE of us have) strikes me as kind of contemptible, disturbed and silly. Just do your best, be productive, don't hurt anyone...be happy. You may have no answers (to the questions EVERYONE throughout the ages have been asking) but you DO have YOUTH. Use it. Live this life you have...and be happy. Period. That's all there is...all there ever will be! Don't waste TOO much of your precious time.
GA

[E. M. Murren]

Roethke once wrote, "In a dark time, the eye begins to see." I quote that line often to myself. Well written. Cheers.