XXIX - I Wish I Thought Like You

When Leonardo, Romeu and Alex arrived at the Japanese restaurant, they found David already waiting for them. He was sitting inside, and was about half way through his second beer of the night. ‘I got here earlier than I expected, so I got started without you guys. Come on now, you gotta make up for the lost time and start drinking!

‘A cheers to the return of our estranged friend who has finally come back home!’ Said David, half an hour and a beer and a half later, prompting Leonardo, Alex and Romeu to clash their beers. In the meantime they had managed to catch up with David, and were already feeling the effect of the hastily consumed alcohol. 

‘Holy shit, this raw fish is really good!’ said Romeu, with his mouth still filled with salmon.

‘It’s not raw fish Romeu, it’s called Sushi,’ corrected him Leonardo.

‘It’s not raw fish?’ Romeu asked visibly confused.

‘I mean… yeah, but it’s called Sushi.’

‘Whatever, Sushi, raw fish, it’s all the same, I just know that it is pretty good. But anyways, tells us about your adventures. Why did it take you so long to come? You said you went to Morocco? Man, you gotta tell peoplethe places you go to, your mom even called me at some point to ask me if I knew where you were. Didn’t you tell her?’

‘No… I sort of needed some time to think, whithout anyone bothering me.’

‘To think about what?’

‘I don’t know, about live I suppose.’

‘About live? What about live?’

‘Everything I suppose. The meaning of life, why we do everything we do.’

‘Holy crap, that’s deep stuff man. I can’t imagine you found too many answers.’

‘Maybe not, but I think that I got to some answers.’

‘Like what?’

‘I realized, when I was standing alone in the desert, that I am like a grain of sand, carried by the wind from one place to another, small and insignificant.’

‘I’m sorry Leo, but that doesn’t sound like much of a discovery.’

‘You don’t think so?’

‘Not really, if you ask me.’

 ‘I don’t know, maybe you’re right, although I don’t agree with you.’

‘Can you tell me why?’

‘Well, realizing something as simple as that made me change the way I see my life and the word around me.’

‘How so?’

‘Before I used to think that, somehow, in some way, everything I did had a meaning and a purpose, but when I found myself looking at the desert sky I just realized how arrogant and stupid I was. The truth is that every path leads to the same destiny, which lies six feet beneath the ground. Not even the stars are eternal. Everything is constantly moving towards the end, one day at a time. That’s probably why society, religion and our families have tried so hard to convince us that the things we do are meaningful and important, the only problem is that it’s just not true.’

‘Yeah, but what do you conclude from all that?’ asked Romeu, slightly upset but engaged.

‘I’m not sure yet, but for starters, I know that there is no one path that I must follow. Nothing is written on the stars because not even the stars last forever even they are destined for destruction. Our time in this earth is limited and insignificant. So having a job, be part of society, do what my family tells me to do, obtain financial security, buying a house… everything is insignificant at the end. I’m willing to do most of those things, if not I probably wouldn’t be here right now, yet I know that it ultimately doesn’t really matter.

In comes society trying to make sense of everything and so a bunch of things are introduced in order to make sense of things like money, laws, religion, jobs, etiquette, ethics, social norms, careers, social status and so on. Yet the truth is that we’re all the same and we’re all going to the same place eventually. It’s all a castle made of sand, just waiting to be blown away by the wind. And if tomorrow I decided to turn my back on all of that, to turn my back on society, the world wouldn’t end, the gods wouldn’t get mad. It’s all constructions of the human mind, designed to give meaning to what is in fact meaningless.

‘So why did you come back?’

‘Honestly… I came back because I’m not sure about what to do with my life, so for now I prefer to believe in the lies again. I couldn’t resist the string pull of inertia, but at least I feel that I’m not so embroiled in the web of ignorance as I was before. I’m a prisoner, but now I know what I am.’

‘Leo, we have know each other for many year now, since we were kids, and I love you, but I think you’re a little bit mad,’ said Romeu, unconvinced by Leonardo’s drastic ideas.

‘Leo, if everything is meaningless, why do you get up every morning? Why did you just accept a job? Why do you keep living at all?’ asked Alex, always willing to discuss Leonardo’s crazy ideas, since he also had quite a few of his own.

‘It’s probably ‘cause we’re scared of facing the truth I think, although I think that most often we’re just not even aware of the truth at all. And some times, when we think hard enough and realize what the truth is, w try to forget it because it makes us feel like shit. Who wants to live a meaningless live after all? I don’t, I makes me feel, small, insignificant and stupid. I much prefer finding a job, write news that are supposed to matter and make enough money to finance a mortgage and feed two or three brats. Ignorance is bliss, ain’t that what they say?’

‘They do in The Matrix…’

‘We might not live inside a computer program, but we live in a world that doesn’t make a lot of sense to rational beings capable of questioning the reasons behind their existence but which are enable to find any answers. So it’s better to just turn into a sheep and follow society’s rules I suppose. I mean, that’s the best next thing after being an actual sheep… sheep, cows, horses they don’t ‘ave the problems we do after all. They just eat, piss, shit, mate and die and that’s it, everything comes naturally to them animals.’

And us, humans, we just had to become so smart didn’t we? Ask questions that we can’t get the answer to that is our prime ability. So here we are, in this sad predicament. So we try to come up with antidotes and we squeeze all of them in a little book that might as well be called: how to proceed in civilized society. We have all these rules, fears and insecurities and we work really hard to wash them away, to feel safe and important even though we’re none of those things. Some crazy, overly ambitious people, even dare to entertain the notion that they are somehow indispensable, but really it’s all a hairy lie. The real truth is that nothing makes any god damn sense and that there’s nothing there after we die. Everything we do we do because we’re terrified of dying, because we’re scared of being poor, fear of being beaten up, fear, fear, fear of everything. Fear to discover that WE ARE NOT INDISPENSABLE. And look at me now, a trainee at the Publico, just about to start my life in society. So when I get my first mortgage we ought to celebrate with some port wine. Then when I get married we can upgrade to champagne and so on. What do you want me to say dear friend, pragmatic thinking Romeu, other than I wish I thought like you?’

‘Shit Leo, you’re the most fucked up guy I know!’ said Romeu, shaking his head in visible disappointment. ‘The only way to get you to behave like everyone else is to get you drunk, and even then…’