The Prophet

We all know it’s going to happen. We all know that one day, we won’t wake up to see the next. We all know this. It’s common knowledge. Always has been, and chances are, always will be. No one likes to acknowledge this fact, no matter how true.

Death will come for us all. Not the best thing to think about, I know, but it’s the truth. You’re going to die. He’s going to die. She’s going to die. Your uncle’s ex-girlfriend’s neighbor’s congressmen? He died last week. It didn’t come as a shock to anyone. A scientist by the name of “Prophet” found a way to calculate the estimated year of his own death. As it turns out, his science was one hundred percent accurate. I don’t personally know the exact science behind his work and the work after him, but I do know that it was his work that provided the groundwork of what we have now.

In today’s society, we now have a way to calculate the exact time of someone’s death down to the second.

This method was tested, changed, and perfected so vigorously that with our current “Prophet” machine there has never been an incorrect death date predicted. We’re so sure of “Prophet’s” abilities that we run newborn babies under a machine after birth that tattoos their death date directly on their skin.

Congratulations! Your baby will live to 78! Unfortunately you yourself won’t live to see their first birthday! Sucks for you!

The “Prophet” system has been going on for centuries. It’s now a law that all people must have their death dates tattooed on their skin. Though, I don’t believe I've ever seen anyone go to jail because they didn’t. They just have their dates put on their skin right then and there with hand-held “Prophets” that all police officers, firefighters, and hospital workers are issued.

So now thanks to “Prophet,” he knows when he’s going to die, she knows when she’s going to die, you know when you’re going to die, they know when they’re going to die, your uncle’s ex-girlfriend’s neighbor’s congressmen paid off all his debts, picked his casket, planned his own funeral, and made sure everyone RSVPed because he knew when he was going to die.

Thanks “Prophet!”

And now I bet you’re saying to yourself, “Shouldn’t you be happy? You also know when YOU are going to die! Great right?” And to that I say

“Shut up, you!” Because I am not happy! This is not great! You couldn’t be more wrong.

Don’t be alarmed! It’s not that I didn’t know what my date was! My simple law abiding parents did what law abiding people did best. They followed the law and sent me through “Prophet.”

The night of my birth, my poor little mother went into premature labor. Later that night my poor little premature baby self went into the “Prophet.” I learned then that my poor little premature baby self only had 30 years to live. My premature baby self would later learn that my poor little mother died during childbirth, and my poor little father was serving life without parole. So poor little premature baby self went on living life until january 1st, 2407 at 3:56 pm. This is the day that poor little premature baby me dies. Or should I say poor little thirty year old me dies.

At 3:55 pm, January 1st, 2407, I was doing a bit thinking...

Time is a funny thing. A second turns into a minute. A minute into an hour. An hour into a day. A day into a year. A year into a century. One life. One tiny microscopic life on the microscope of the universe.

What does it mean?

Don’t worry, the question I'm asking isn’t “What is the meaning of life?” The answer to my question isn’t, “Life is what you make it.” I’m talking about the meaning of existence. Every day up until today, my date, that question plagued my every waking minute.

I spent my underdeveloped years in the orphanage. Up to this day I’m unsure what the name of the orphanage even was, we just referred to it as the orphanage.

By “we” I mean the other lone children there with me, of course. There weren’t many of us, but there were enough. I wouldn’t say I was particularly close to any of them. I'm pretty sure the rest could say the same thing about each other. We talked every now and then, but for the most part we were on our own. In our own little worlds. Whatever that world may be.

Montgomery and his wife Mckinley were the caretakers of the orphanage. I remember very little about what they looked like or how they acted. Details like a person’s appearance doesn’t matter in the long run. What a person was wearing, their eye color, their hair length or the color of their skin is forgotten years afterwards. Fretting about such things in the present is futile and a waste of precious time.

Growing up in the orphanage wasn’t necessarily hard, I got along with everyone and there was enough food to go around. After all, there were only 5 of us. If I had to describe the orphanage I'd be able to do so in two words. Perhaps even more if I can think of any. A mind tends to think rapidly when it has less than 60 seconds left to think.

Life in the orphanage was simple, dull, and grey. See there, I found another word!

Other than “Prophet,” things hadn’t really improved much as far as technological advancements go. Other than that everything was pretty much the same.

The other children did as children do, playing indoors and outdoors with things like mud, worms, and insects. They were always nauseatingly happy it would seem.

I however was always inside Moping, Sobbing, Thinking, Crying, and Despairing. For years many questions went on in my head.

Why was I left here alone?

What had I done to deserve such a fate as this?

This train of thought continued as the years went on. Brewing and Festering, changing from a curious child’s thought to an adult's obsession. That same train of thought ran rampant in my mind as I graduated from high school; lowest GPA of course, went to college; only to drop out a month later, And got a job.

I enjoyed college, I majored in psychology; something that I was vividly interested in. I had the freedom to think more often than I did in High School. With that thinking came the thought that all of this was meaningless.

Why was I aiming for a PhD when I wouldn’t even have the time to really develop my career?

Why was I spending my time worrying over little things like course deadlines when my own deadline was fast approaching?

Of course there was the argument that I could get an associates degree at least and still get a fairly decent job. Though with that came the counterargument: “Why do something that wastes my very limited time.”

I wouldn’t have worked at all, but unfortunately in modern day society we need money to survive. So, I got a job as a cashier at the “L & L” down the street from my apartment. Due to the terrible location of the store, we barely got any business. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t complaining. This just gave me more time to think.

I know what you’re going to ask me: “At this point, you at least had a good family life right?” Well, that’s also a “no.” Of course during high school there were admirers and admired, but I never acted out of these feelings. Why would I go out of my way to have a significant other just to watch both of our meaningless lives go by. It was bad enough just to watch my own slip away. Or worse, have them watch my life go by with pity because they were privileged enough to have 70, 80, even 90 years to go.

So, I stayed alone.

Things went on in a routine like manner for years. Wake up, get dressed, go to work, come home, and go to sleep. With daily life things like driving, eating, and etcetera in between.

Sometime during one of these meaningless years, I can't remember exactly when or why this thought came to me- Actually, yes! Yes I do remember!

I was ringing up a woman. She had 5 children of hers running around the store and holding another one. It seemed she was having trouble keeping them together. Upon noticing my gaze on the havoc they were wrecking throughout the store, the lady explained to me that she couldn’t drop them off at the daycare that morning due to the daycare being closed that day. Thus, stopping her from being able to go to work that day. Which was a darn shame because her ex-husband had failed to send child support. Apparently, it was difficult enough for her to make ends meet, even with working overtime.

This brought onto me a sudden revelation. My routine wasn’t all that different from most people around me. For example, the lady I met in the store. She woke up, got dressed, went to work, came home, and went to sleep everyday, much like myself. A look at her death date tattoo showed that her upcoming demise was not unlike mine as well. Same year as mine in fact. The lady couldn’t have been a year over 27. She was the same age I was as well during this moment in time. The difference between us was that she was noticeably happier.

I wouldn’t say that I myself was depressed, far from it actually. Though, I suppose that depends on one’s own sense of depression. This lady however, no matter your view on what passes into the category of depression, was far from it.

She was happy, ecstatic even, as she described the hardcomings of her life at that moment. She seemed completely oblivious to the feelings that she “should have been” feeling due to the variables in her life up to that point. I suppose it was at this point that I wondered whether or not I was going about things wrong. I began to wonder if I spent most of my life not truly enjoying what it had to offer.

I quickly push these thoughts aside. They were foolish. I spent my life thinking logically. I spent my life seeing life the way it was instead of floating by completely ignorant to my despair. Instead of jealousy for the lady’s lack of despair, I pitied her ignorance. The advanced farmer doesn’t pity the carefree sheep. The farmer knows the sheep will be turned into lamb chops and pities them for it. The farmer does not envy the sheep’s nonchalant attitude. So, I put the thought of the lady aside and away. Haven’t thought about that in years.

Random things tend to come to mind when you’re running out of time.

After this, things went on just as they had before. Wake up, get dressed, go to work, come home, and go to sleep.

Wake up, Get dressed, go to work, come home, go to sleep.

Wake up. Wake up every day, knowing that each day will be as uneventful as before. How do people do this? How do they go on knowing that each day brings you closer to your inevitable end. Maybe because they get more time, they don’t have to think about it until it’s that time. In that case, wouldn’t that realization hit them suddenly? Everything, everything they had done, was all for naught. Is that worse?

Get dressed, go to work, come home… The same little things over and over again. Get dressed, go to work, come home. What’s the point? All these things we do because we have to. How much control of our little lives do we actually have? We spend our lives doing things we don’t want to do like working and we have zero control over it.

Go to sleep. We’re doing all that we can do. Worrying about everything that we worry about. Knowing that in reality it’s all for naught. What else are we going to do?

What else are we going to do, indeed?

There is so much we can do, but don’t. So much we want to do, but can’t. Even when you have the time, you won’t. Why don’t we go to the beach more often? Why don’t we throw a party just for the heck of it? Why don’t we jump on our beds? Why don’t we slide around in socks? Why don’t we go outside in pajamas? Why don’t we run through water sprinklers? Why don’t we live every moment like it’s our last? Why don’t we strive for happiness instead of society’s definition of success? Why don’t we search every single day of our lives to obtain the happiness that woman I met had all the way up to her own end? Why don’t we realize that our time and happiness is priceless? Why don’t we realize that any job or mundane task taking away from our own happiness is something we should avoid like the plague? Why don’t we? Eventually that turns into “Why didn’t we?”

Why didn’t I?

It’s too late now.