The Egg by Andy Weir

Eight minutes.

It took exactly eight minutes to change and reaffirm my life simultaneously. The Egg is a short story with two present characters. Other characters are referenced with minimal and ultimate significance to the plot twist.

The nameless main character faces the ultimate gut check - the unnamed character's existential existence. No longer on the temporal plane, the 48-year being must come to terms with life as he knew and knows it. It is a mind-bending tale of the meaning of life.

I get it. I felt every word as if I had lived each one. I knew this story. It felt familiar. I tossed each word over my synaptic nerve. I played the sentences like a sonata under the skillful fingers of Beethoven. Immortality means something different in Andy Weir's The Egg.

I remember it like it was yesterday. It was 2015. Life for me was shifting. People were moving in and out of my life like pieces on a chessboard. The metaphors and symbolism of The Egg reached into my core and electrified my mind.

The questions I had been ridiculed for having received answers for $2.94, the price of the Audible book. The concepts I spoke life into now memorialized gave meaning to my suppositions.

A nameless 48-year-old man dies. He learns of his death with brevity and satire. But death is not the end. Life is not about just living but finding meaning in why we live.

Converging multiple doctrines into one, the Creator and the man discuss existentialism and nihilism. I felt it. The Egg is a metaphor for The Universe. This being is reincarnated through different people and at various times in this construct. But it gets better. Sometimes this being is not reincarnated into a human at all. {Gasp} Bearing the question of what it means to know. The ethos.

The Egg changed me because it brought the constructs of You and Me full circle. Whereas You represents every living and dead human being, and Me is the evolved version of You.

{Excerpt}

You: "But all the people on Earth?"

Me: "All You. Different incarnations of You.

You:" Wait, I'm Everyone?"

Me: "Now, You're Getting it." I say with a congratulatory slap on the back.

You: I'm Abraham Lincoln?"

Me: And You're John Wilkes Booth, too," I added

You: I'm Hitler?" you said, appalled

Me: "And the millions he killed

You: "I'm Jesus"

Me: "And the people who followed him."

(Long pause, you fell silent)

Me: Every time you victimized someone, you were victimizing yourself.

Me: Every act of kindness you have done, you have done to yourself.

As You continued to outline the existence of You and Me, the higher being explains the provocative question most people of faith have. Their purpose for living is what exactly. Here, it is to evolve into an omniscient and omnipresent being. There is only You, Me, and The Egg. Focus on developing yourself without harming the Egg or You. It was powerful and became the foundation for the next chapter of my life.

Like the Hippocratic oath for doctors, "First do no harm." That is the purpose of life. Treat others as you would have them treat you. Predicated on the belief that you treat yourself dutifully and with grace. It made me ever-present of my actions and their impact on others. I tossed each statement like a Ceasar salad before I served them up. Every move I took was rehearsed in my mind before I made the first motion. Reading the Egg made me human, omnipresent, and omniscient in eight minutes.

The humor and delivery of the audiobook put you through the pace of what one might experience in an afterlife conversation with their deity. Full of candor, humility, and knowledge.

You: I'm a God.

Me: "Not yet. Right now, you're a fetus. Once you have acquired enough knowledge, you will be born."

We are all God to someone. The helper. The healer. The provider. The seer. The giver. The teacher. The advocate. This book leverages symbolism and metaphoric language to draw the reader into a meta-conversation on existentialism resulting in a conscious decision to elevate to the highest level of existence. No longer human, but immortal.

Everything is cyclical. You are what you do. What you say becomes who you are. If the Universe represents an incubator, then the human is the chicken. The Egg created space to question and realize the meaning of life.