Meaning

12/1/17

Midnight. I’m lying on my side, facing the wall to the right of my bed, unable to sleep.

A frenzied knocking at the door of the apartment directly below mine…accompanied by a single, hurried voice. I can’t make out the words. The door opens and, for a second, all goes silent. A few, loud bangs: pop…pop-pop. I feel a sudden mule-kick to the center of my chest. All the air rushes out of my lungs, and I hear the fourth resounding bang almost simultaneously. Searing pain.

A hole in the floor.

Gunshots.

My undershirt sticks to my chest as the blood spreads from the wound. Eyes wide, I draw breath but choke on the attempt. My lungs won’t take any air.

I’m drowning.

My vision is receding. And the ever-shrinking center is beginning to blur.

Fuck, I can’t feel my arms. My legs…

The already-dark room is fading away, and I’m sinking.

I strive for breath one last time before I stop struggling; the velvety blackness is so welcoming now. It beckons, and I fall further from consciousness. Pulling – pulling me ever faster away.

I’m unaware of who I am and who I was. I can feel myself unraveling. Into…

Nothing.

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The countless eons after my passing will elapse just as those before my birth did: in an eyeblink, and without my awareness of them having gone by.

People say that life is short, but it’s the longest – and only – thing we know. Even if it’s only for an instant. Cosmically speaking, that’s all it is anyway.

Forty-six billion light-years in all directions, and that’s just what we can see. It’s an unimaginably vast distance, yet we’re limited to our tiny blue-green ball. A beautiful world, but incredibly tiny in the grand scheme of things. All that we do, and all that we are, at least for now, begins and ends here, on our speck of cosmic dust. Cliché or not, the vastness of it all takes my breath away.

So, where should I assign meaning? If I were still a religious individual, this might be far easier question to answer or otherwise explain away.

I don’t like easy. Besides, the fifteen years of Catholic school were about ten years too many for me to be fully indoctrinated. After a certain amount of Bible study, the hypocrisy in many of the passages became too glaring to avoid, at least for me. Since I was raised in Christianity, I always equated the answer to that all-encompassing question with god, which prompted me to research other religions.

I found many similar inconsistencies. The sacred texts that claim to be the product of divine inspiration are littered with our ancestors’ fingerprints. This is not to say that god doesn’t exist. I don’t know that we could comprehend it, if it did.

No one really knows. From the most devout imam, rabbi, or priest, to the celebrant of any other religion I could name, no one knows. Faith, profound as it may be, does not equal knowledge.

So, again, where should I assign meaning? The answer I keep coming back to seems simple enough; love and happiness.

No matter how bad things may get, the majority of us, no matter how unfortunate, can say that this is better than the alternative: non-existence. So, it serves to just be grateful for the opportunity to exist, even if it’s only for a little while.

The ‘power of one’ is a concept that has always resonated with me. One individual can change a family. One family can change a town. One town can change a nation. One nation can change the world. So, I think being kind in our day-to-day interactions does make a difference over time. As cynical of human nature as I am, I’d like to think that many, if not most, people are basically good, with a few bad tendencies. Not the other way around. That said, I think the majority of us would respond to kindness by paying it forward.

Love thyself and thy neighbor…sounds like something I heard in school a couple times.

It’s the best kind of influence we can hope to have, individually.

All that exists doesn’t do so for our sake. We’re a product of existence, not the reason for it. We’re all stuck together on this infinitesimally small piece of existence, so I think at least making an attempt to ease the collective burden on us all goes a long way.

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A frenzied knocking at the door of the apartment directly below mine…accompanied by a single, hurried voice. I can’t make out the words. The door opens and, for a second, all goes silent. The occupant answers with what sounds like a cheerful greeting and welcomes their visitor inside. The door closes.

I exhale and roll onto my back. While staring at the ceiling, I try to imagine the night sky and stars beyond it.

~Sean Donnelly