A Life's Worth

Aaron ran his hands through his damp, dark hair, enjoying the cool wetness in between his fingers.  He looked at himself in the fogged mirror, and though fresh out of the shower, he looked as tired and pale as he had when he got home.  His muscles ached and reminded him that it would take more than a five minute wash to rejuvenate him.  He closed his eyes and put his head down in an effort to clear his mind, but the sound of his heart beating, his blood pulsing, and his deep, heavy breathing flooded his thoughts like the pervasive hammering of a discordant percussive symphony or an abused car stereo.

He shook his head, frustrated at the futility of it all.  Pulling on his boxer briefs and a light robe, he meandered out to the TV room, sat down, and turned it on.  His body, fueled by caffeinates and sugar throughout the day, was a zombified thing, far too wired to allow him sleep but carrying a brain that was far too exhausted to allow him any productivity.  He clicked through the channels almost involuntarily and almost too fast for him to process what he was missing, though he didn’t actually care.  The repetitiveness brought a strange sensation of agitated calm where everything was at rest but on the verge of total collapse.

Unbidden, Aaron’s thought process tried to ascertain the source of his discomfort, though he knew damn well what it was.  When he had signed up for his job, he intended to do the world some good.  He intended to come home every day and enjoy the notion that he was trying to make the world a better place and that he was helping to balance out the pain and suffering his eyes had forever been awoken to. What did it say about him, then, that he was more miserable than he had ever been?  That pain and suffering was a tangible thing now, beating back his hopes and efforts with an overwhelming sense of inevitability and misery.  How foolish he had been.  To think he could make any real difference.  He was no great leader or champion for a cause.  Just a misguided and overeager fool seeking to assuage his guilt over his previous ignorance.

The morbidity and suddenness of the thoughts shocked Aaron and made him jolt upright.  The depressing stream of consciousness was a little too much for him to bear.  He had to get his mind on a new track; if nothing else, it would help him sleep easier.

He looked around for something to do and it occurred to him that he hadn’t taken out the trash.  He got up with much more effort than he thought should be necessary, put on his moccasins, grabbed the plastic bag of non-recyclable garbage, and headed out the front door.

As he walked down the brick path leading to his front door and surveyed the street, a horrid stink crept into his nostrils.  It reminded him of putrefaction and disease, like long spoiled meat left out in the sun.  He held his nose shut with one hand and the garbage bag out with the other, but he couldn’t think of anything he had put into that bag that would make such a repugnant stench.  Besides, it would have tainted his kitchen had it been his fault.  He looked up and down the dark street of his block, thinking maybe a sewage line had burst or someone’s septic tank had erupted, but no ready source could be found. 

All too eager to go back inside and escape the smell, Aaron quickly dropped the bag into the designated trash can at the curb and turned back to his door.

A massive shape appeared from nowhere, standing right in front of Aaron and blocking his path. 

The figure was vaguely humanoid, covered in overlapping layers of heavy, filthy cloth.  Its shoulders heaved up and down, presumably with the exertion of respiration.  The stink saturated the area around it, and had Aaron not been so surprised, he would surely have vomited. 

The only thing clean and readily distinguishable on the giant was the shimmering stainless steel of an eight inch kitchen knife, bared and threatening.

“Don’t scream,” the leviathan muttered, its voice deep, rumbling, and hoarse.

Aaron nodded slowly.

“Please, I…” he started.

“Shut up,” the giant said, cutting him off.  “We’re going inside, getting everything you’ve got, and then I’m going to leave without any trouble.  Got it?”

“Please!” Aaron said in a forceful whisper.  “I help people like you all the time.  It’s my job!”

“That’s wonderful,” the giant said.  It took Aaron a moment to realize the sarcasm.  “Inside,” he commanded.

Quietly and calmly, the two entered Aaron’s house.  On the way toward his room, Aaron stopped and turned around.  He had to stop himself from flinching when he saw the knife again.

“Will you just hear me out?” Aaron asked.

“If I have to tell you again,” the thief said, “I’ll say it with this.”  He brandished the blade to emphasize the point.

“Please.  If you don’t like what I have to say, you can take my money and go without another peep out of me,” Aaron said.

“Fine,” the invader grumbled.  “You have two minutes.  And keep your hands where I can see them.”

“Why are you doing this?” Aaron asked after a long pause.

“If you’re going to ask stupid questions like that, just go get what I’m here for,” the homeless man answered.

“No, I don’t mean because you’re homeless and poor,” Aaron said quickly.  “I mean what put you in this state?  Foreclosure?  Drugs?  Violence?”

“What’s it matter to you?” the giant asked.

“Because there are things that can be done to help you escape those,” Aaron answered. 

“Enough of this intervention shit,” the thief spat. 

“Wait!  You said I had two minutes,” Aaron said.

“The clock is ticking,” came the reply.

“Okay.  Let me put it this way.  I work with homeless people for a living,” Aaron said.  “When I started I thought that working with soup kitchens and donating to charities would heal everything.  I’ve poured so much effort into running them and working in them that I can barely see straight now.  And just before you showed up, I began to question the purpose of it all.  It seems inevitable, doesn’t it?  That some people will always been homeless and that no matter how much work is done, it will do nothing more than stem the tide?”

Aaron took the man’s silence as somewhat of an agreement.

“But it’s amazing what adrenaline will do to a tired mind,” Aaron said, earning a raised eyebrow from his attacker.  “It’s not about what I’m doing.  It’s about you.  It’s about getting down to the root of the problem.  It’s about changing cultural perspective.  It’s about changing your perspective.  Please- what got you to this place?”

The man’s breathing was heavier and more agitated.  Aaron was worried that he had gone too fast or been too bold and that the giant might snap, but to both of their surprise, he answered.

“My wife left me for a former friend.  I couldn’t take it.  I stopped caring.”

The man’s tone was monotonous, as if it were the only way he could say such things without having a catastrophic breakdown.

“Why did you stop caring?”  Aaron asked.

“What is there to care about?  I didn’t show it like I should have, but I loved that bitch.  I put all my time and money into making the future that everyone is supposed to want.  And what did I get?  I come home one day and she tells me she’s leaving.”

A hint of anger had entered his voice.  Aaron watched with apprehension as the man’s painful past was called forth from whatever rarely tread placed of his mind he had buried it in.

“After that, I didn’t see a point to any of this,” the man said, moving the knife in an arc to indicate the nice quarters around him.  “It’s all hollow and lonely.  Nothing but a reminder of what should have been mine.  What I had earned.”

“Has taking money and living on your own taken the pain away?”  Aaron asked, desperately trying to keep all arrogance out of the question.

“No,” the man said after a long moment.  “But I don’t want to be in this pathetic rat race either.”

“I understand,” Aaron said.

“Do you?” the man scoffed.  “Look at this place.  Look at you.  You don’t know a damn thing about what it’s like to be me.  To suffer true loss.  You people refer to ‘rock bottom’ as some place where a comeback is guaranteed.  Well, I’ve actually been there.  I’m still there.  It would kill you.”

“I don’t claim to understand your experience, and you may be right- it might very well kill me.  But we’ve seen the same thing.  The heart of darkness, as it were.  I might not have been in it, but I’ve seen it, just like you.”

Aaron considered his next works carefully, never taking his eyes off of the knife, even though the man held it in a less confrontational way now.

“That heart is self-worth.  Self-respect.  Self-esteem.  Whatever you want to call it,” Aaron said.

“So your big answer is I have to like myself more?” the man asked with a tone.

“No,” Aaron answered with a smile.  “You need to understand that the “rat race”, as you called it, shouldn’t be about being part of high society or fulfilling some standard of cultural acceptability.  It’s about finding what you want out of life, what you can mean to the people around you, and not betraying your true worth.”

“What the hell are you talking about?  You mean do what I want?”

“Essentially, yes, but after deciding that objectively and without trying to hurt anyone.”

The man shook his head, confused.

“Look,” Aaron said.  “You said you worked all of your life to make this idyllic living for you and your wife, right? Well, is it what you really would have been happy doing?”

“I don’t know anymore,” the man answered.

“None of us really do.  We have to operate off of some hope that we haven’t been deluding ourselves when thinking it will all turn out okay,” Aaron said.  “But that journey isn’t over for you.  You found one dead end.  It’s time to try another.  It’s time to understand that your life hasn’t been a waste.  You have to understand that you aren’t a waste.  That there are people and there will be people who care about you and what you do.  You matter to them, and your actions will have a rippling effect that can be positive, whether now or a thousand years from now.”

“How can you possibly know any of that?” the man asked.

“It’s the only way in which our world makes sense, as far as I can see it,” Aaron replied.  “It’s the only way in which our lives have real meaning.  We are, or can be, part of something greater than ourselves- the betterment of the species.  If you had the chance, wouldn’t you step forward to help someone avoid what has happened to you?”

Again, the man’s silence was taken as affirmation.

“There are people out there who need your help.  Who need my help.  And if they don’t get it, there’s no telling where they might end up,” Aaron said. 

“What is in it for me?” the man asked, hesitantly.  “I’ve given so much already, I don’t see how it’s fair to ask more.”

“The experiences,” Aaron answered.  “And I don’t just mean in a cheesy ‘feel better because you’re being nice’ way.  I mean that you will be introduced to things you didn’t think were possible.  Things that truly mean something to you.  You will find the understanding you are looking for.  Anyone can look back in the moment and see that their past made them what they are.  Not many are willing to look ahead and admit that their lives have yet to truly be defined.  And if your life hasn’t yet been defined, you can’t say that you aren’t, or weren’t, worth the effort.”

The man took a step back, his eyes flittering around as he tried to comprehend what Aaron had told him.

“Are you willing to try, at least?” Aaron asked.

“I…I think so,” the man said.

“Thank you.  Would you like some food and a shower?  Maybe a fresh set of clothes?” Aaron asked.

The man nodded.

“If you don’t mind, can I have the knife now?  I want to be a friend to you, and no one makes friends with a weapon.”

The man handed over the blade sheepishly and shuffled into the kitchen, completely robbed of his once towering and menacing aspect.

Aaron stepped out of sight for a moment and exhaled deeply.  He shuddered, realizing how absurd his little stunt had been.  One slight misstep and he would have been dead.  But for all of the moment’s incredulity, Aaron realized that the words had been for himself as much as the homeless man now sitting at his table.

+ + + + +

The purpose of life may yet be undefined, but the one thing that the combination of life and self-awareness is certainly meant for is the quest to find that purpose.  Whether the experiment of some supreme being or an accident of the universe’s practically limitless potential, we owe it to ourselves to make use of the talents and tools we possess, both to facilitate the biological drive of ensuring the future of the species and to explore the limits of what it means to be human.  Like the facets of a planet spanning, picture forming collage, each of us is a distinguishable and critical piece of a whole tapestry that is woven through the span of eons.  Individually and as one, we take on and pass on the torch of discovery and hope because, if nothing else, we know we aren’t done yet.