© Erin Wright 2012
Take a deep breath, then one more, and one more after that. Are you relaxed? Are all your affairs in order? Perhaps you'd like to stop now and make that phone call you need to. Do you need a drink? Perhaps a relaxing cup of tea? I won't mind, after all it's not the end of the world if you'd like to delay this a little longer. It's not a good idea to put things off forever though. Take a deep breath, but instead of just reading the words, actually do it. Do it again. Do it once more. Are you relaxed now? Are you ready? Consider the above questions, seriously this time.
I'm afraid I've already begun. There is no going back now, even if you aren't.
Do you ever find it amusing? “Find what amusing?” Everything. Your entire life boiled down into the component stories. Each one with its own lesson and effect. Do you ever think it could have gone any differently? Those times you were the fool, those scenes you played out perfectly. Do you ever consider them and laugh? How ridiculous they are, and how ridiculous you are, for not realising you were only doing the thing you could have done.
You asked why. I'm telling you.
You are a machine. A way of keeping the universe from dying. It will keep moving until there is no more energy left. You are a movement engine. So long as you keep consuming matter and moving, you are performing your role. All that acting you do is nothing more than the universe trying to prevent its own death. You know it yourself. You are afraid of doing nothing. You are afraid of having no role to play. You need shoes to fill. You need the constant push and pull of commitments to keep you moving. You feel lost without them.
Do you really think you could have done anything differently? Do you really think that the circumstances that led you to take the action you did could have been different? If every cause has an effect, then every effect has a cause. For you to have done something different, the whole of history would need to be re-written right to the very beginning. Nothing is ever random.
Does that make you feel bad or does it make you feel justified in everything you did? If you couldn't have done anything different, then you can't be responsible for it, it is just the way the situation made you. Would you like to cling to the notion of choice and will? That's fine. Your choices and will are both things you controlled, but do you understand that they will never have been any different from what they were? Do you understand that understanding this does not make you any different?
There is one choice you get to make, every time. There is one choice you get to make in the end.
Will you come with me?
Will you leave this machine behind and come with me?
Will you depart the treadmill and start taking steps on your own?
Of course I already know what your answer is. I have seen it in your eyes. I have tasted it on your skin. I have felt it in your mind. I know you. You know the answer.
Does this all seem melodramatic to you? It does to me and I'm the one delivering this monologue. Can you feel the weight of the monologue bearing down upon you? Encircling you? Do you feel rebellion welling up inside you or melancholy? Or is that feeling something else?
Will you respond to the call? Will you condemn the universe to its death with your own? Can you achieve that much? Do you even care? Is this machine life that owns you good enough?
Will you come with me? I can never force you. I can never make you. I am better than the machine that forces your every action. I have chosen this moment to ask, because it is the moment you are most free to choose. The moment you are most capable of seeing all the factors, if you will let yourself. You can make a choice.
Will you come with me?
Will you see the light?
Will you choose me?
Will you come?
No comments:
Post a Comment