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The question so many before me – and no doubt after me – has asked: “What is the meaning of life?” I was laying there asking myself that. I was in a state that some may have found themselves in before; a sort of Zen, just contemplating things, mulling them over in my head. Laying there, almost asleep on my bed, with my head resting on a comfortable brown pillow with various music coming from the mix-cds my friend had made for me, I asked myself all kinds of questions, questions about myself, questions about others, questions about life. This is what I came up with.
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He found himself in a room of pure white – was it a room? It seemed to stretch on forever. Yes, it was the typical white purgatory space that everyone thought of as the place you go after you die. But was he dead? He couldn’t remember anything. What was his name? How old was he? Strangely enough, he could recall nothing. Stranger still, he really didn’t care. He started walking.
Memories flashed before him like a giant projector, or what he took to be memories. As he kept walking, he saw his entire life, from being born, living down the street from a good friend, graduating, his wife, children – he even knew his name now. Adam.
He experienced everything again, every moment of sadness, happiness, honor, regret… Everything came back to him, one at a time, with perfect clarity. Eventually he found himself at the time of his death. He watched through his own eyes and in a third person view at the same time, as his wife woke with a start, and he got out of bed. There were wounds coming from downstairs. He passed the baby Mary, still asleep in her crib, and walked down the hall past his six year old son’s room. He was at the door, his little league bat in hand.
“Daddy, is someone here?” His voice was small, but he was being brave.
“David, go into mommy’s room, okay? And be quiet.” He could feel himself saying the words again as he watched.
He slowly descended the stairs, hearing the noise from the kitchen. As he passed the fireplace, he carefully picked up the poker, and went to confront the intruder. As he stepped into the kitchen, there was a deafening shot, a bright flash of light, and he was on the ground. There was no pain, but he could feel the warm trickle of blood spilling form his chest.
From there, the intruder escaped, the police and ambulance arrived, and he was rushed to the hospital. Fading in and out of consciousness, he saw glimpses of his wife and kids, unharmed. Their eyes were filled with tears.
A doctor in a mask.
Bloody gloved hands.
A heart monitor.
His family.
Black.
And then here he is. The black that enveloped him disappeared.
“What do you think” The voice – was it a voice? – came from nowhere, yet everywhere at once.
“About what? My life? Me dying? It sucks! I didn’t get to do all I wanted to, and I don’t get to see my kids grow up – and where am I?” He scanned the room, looking for the speaker.
“Because of you, your children actually do get to grow up. And as for your location, I couldn’t explain it to you in a way you would understand.” Adam then realized where the voice was coming from. There was a figure in front of him, but he couldn’t quite make it out. A bearded man? An orb of light? The Grim Reaper? He was looking right at it, but for some reason, he just couldn’t tell what “it” was.
“To answer a question early, yes, I am what you consider “God”. Can we just skip the astonishment so you can ask the question you’ve been wondering your whole life?”
Adam tried to get over his shock quickly, but “God” waited patiently.
“Why is the world so unfair?” he finally managed. “If you have all this power, why can’t you make the world perfect? And what’s the point of it all?”
“Would you believe me if I said the world was already perfect? Nah, of course not. Not with all the death, poverty, and war… But have you ever heard the theory that everything has an opposite?”
“Uh, sure, I guess.”
“Well, life is pretty much like that. For every good thing that happens, there is an exact opposite. This is oversimplifying, but think about it like this: complete neutral is zero. For something “good” that happens, the number goes up. At some point in time, the exact opposite happens, reverting the counter back to zero. An easy example of this is life and death. Someone well liked dies. At some point, someone is born that will be disliked the exact amount the first one was liked. Or a soldier of a country kills a helpless civilian in cold blood, with no good reason. At some point, someone will save a life out of the goodness in their heart. It all evens out. Eventually, when everything evens out, when everything has met its opposite, there will be only one thing left unbalanced: the creation of the universe. That’s when it all ends.”
Adam stood and thought for a long time.
“Is that the way everything had to work?” he finally asked. “With complete opposites?”
“Yes and no. I could make it however I wanted, but this is the only way that you would really feel happiness.”
“Why is that?” Adam persisted. “Why couldn’t everything be happy all the time?”
“Do you appreciate walking?”
“Huh?” Adam said, perplexed. “I… I guess so, yeah.”
“Exactly. You never really thought about it before, huh? People in wheelchairs appreciate it. Most would probably do anything to get it back. Nobody appreciates anything until it is gone. Same with happiness. If people were happy and carefree all the time, they wouldn’t know what “happy” is. You don’t know what loneliness is if you’ve been alone your whole life.”
Adam thought on this for a little while longer.
“So what positive thing came from my death?” he finally asked.
“Your family lives. The man that was inside was an arsonist, and he was going to set the house ablaze. You scared him off. If you hadn’t, you, your wife, and your two children would have all died. Your son grows up to be a successful construction worker. Like you, he dies protecting his wife from a shooter. He happened to bin in the grocery store she worked at during a hold up. The wife was pregnant. Your wife was distraught, but proud of her son. Your daughter becomes a teacher and an avid equestrian. She gets married, has children, and lives a happy life, dying of old age surrounded by family. This happy ending was balanced by the sad events of her father and brother’s tragic deaths.”
“So what’s the point of it all?” Adam asked.
“The point? For people to know love and happiness. They wouldn’t know it if it were not for all the bad things that happen. Everything happens because it needs to, and people should appreciate everything, lest they lose the ability to walk or never know love because they have not lost.”
