The doctor told him that he had Exotropia, and by now he was old enough to understand that this couldn't be something good. The doctor told him that his problem was not uncommon:"It's often times seen in early infants, and in children of ages 6 or 7, it also appears in people with Brain tumors, but we don't need to worry about that last one." He did not care how common the problem was. Even if the disease was some kind of tumor it didn't bother him as much as he was bothered by the prospects that he would not perceive the world in the original sense that he used to do.
What was he losing here? What he sees would not be the same, and has not been the same for a while, and he had not been aware... He was curious to know more:"thanks, doctor, but what happens here? I would not be able to see things as before right?" The doctor seemed to have felt the worried curiosity, and said:"It's all a simple physical process. Your brain's ability to see three-dimensional objects depends on proper alignment of your eyes. When both eyes are properly aligned and aimed at the same target, the visual portion of the brain fuses the forms into a single image. When one eye turns outward two different pictures are sent to the brain."
"what about my mind though?" He left this thought in his heart. "there must be way that my thoughts that seem immaterial affect my material body!" As he was weighing these thoughts, thinking how his mind and body can interact. As he was sinking deeper and deeper into his thoughts the doctor turned around walked behind his desk, sat on his squeaking chair and started jotting down some notes on a prescriptions paper. He leaned forward to look what the doctor was writing, when it suddenly hit him. All those images, that he's been preoccupied with as a kid and even later as a young adult, all those duplications of lines of his handwritings, there were are nothing but problem with his vision of the world. All this time, and he had befriended them and had even named them. He had talked to one of them. All this parallel universe that he had thought existed but had learned to forget about, was not even there in the first place. The psychiatry clinic, how can he forget...he had been forced to forget, but was constantly reminded of the world had created for himself. He thought, how easily can his mind play the greatest tricks on himself.
The doctor made an attention demanding noise, that took him away from his thoughts. He suddenly noticed that he'd been quite for a while, not even as small a movement as a nod to the doctor's explanations. The doctor didn't say anything either. He just started mumbling the notes that he had took, while throwing him a glance to see if he is sinking again. Feeling uncomfortable, he looked at the notes on the desk and asked: "so is it serious?"
He knew that the doctor had recognized his anxiety. "I know you might be a little worried, but this is no serious condition. In fact, there is a very easy treatment" said the doctor.
He looked the doctor in the eye and impatiently replied: "I rather wear glasses than contact lenses, at least for now."
The doctor, looked at him and chuckled: "no, no... glasses would make your condition even worse." He could tell his eyes were widening in wonder. The doctor continued: "You see, there are six muscles that control eye movement, four that move it up and down and two that move it side to side. All these muscles must be coordinated and working properly in order for the brain to see a single image. These muscles like every other muscle in your body can get weaker or stronger. Now, your problem is that your muscles that should keep your eye in place, are not only too weak, but they've been so rarely used, that your brain has seem to lost control over them. Just like when you can't straighten up your ring finger, as you straighten up your middle one" He chuckled a little more at his own joke and said: "You are going to train your eye muscles. The instructions are here on this note. I've written for you an exercise, just do this 50 times a day, and after a month you eyes should become better." The doctor then stood up, and so did he. He took the note and said good-bye hurrying himself out of the clinic.
He was feeling better by now, after all, if there was an exercise that could fix him up for good, then he had no reason to be sad about his vision at least in the future. He opened up the doctor's note, but what he saw seemed to be directly written for him. The note read: "sit relaxedly, take pen or pencil and stare at it, bring it closer and closer to your eyes until, it gets duplicated. Then try to bring the second image into the first one. when done, take the pencil closer, and try again, until the object reached the tip of your nose. then start this all over again. Do this 50 to 100 times a day."
All this time, he's been trying to think hard to forcefully forget about all the duplicates that had constructed for himself, and now he had to un-think them all back. He had to unearth his abilities to create duplicates and this time face them and force them into one, instead of just forgetting about them, and so he did. He did the exercise twice a day, hoping to get his vision better, and meanwhile, unavoidably he gained a lot of control over his eye muscles. But before the first problem started to go away, his vision of the world seemed to have developed a new capacity.
After months of daily practice with the pen, and then with other objects, he seemed to have become capable of making duplicates out of anything and then make the disappear again. Laughing at himself, and his earlier memories, he now once again often looked at the mirror and said: "Hi, Fred, Bye Fred." and again and again: "Hi, Fred, Bye Fred."
He seemed to be in total control of what his mind had once posited on him by itself. He felt good, and nothing else was seriously bothering him. When he got to university, he decided to do double major in Computer Science and Philosophy. He liked what he studied, but post-secondary education was a whole lot different than any other sort of learning experience he has had. There was pressure, and there were deadlines. But besides all that, there was a more fundamental difference. University seemed much more like real life. Under the pressure of readings and essays and computer assignments, he noticed that he is always facing a choice, whether to do the best job that he can using his academic skills on his work to get the best mark that he can, or whether to best job that he can using his behavioral and negotiating skills on other's work to get the best mark that he can. There was always a choice for him whether to copy and assignment or do it on himself. But as the deadlines piled up toward the end of every semester, the second option usually ended up to be the more attractive one.
Now, he had been brought up, getting to know his smart older brother, and his mother constantly reminding him of right and wrong. he had grown up in a family where his dad would not stop telling samurai stories on their picnics and his brother would force him to confess his lies to his parents. He thought he had a sense of honor, and he felt at times that what seemed honorable to him contradicted, even hindered his values for social well-being and even academic achievements.
In university life, and later during his employment, he learned to unearth all those habits that he had while growing up, and compromise them, when he needed a better mark, or even better friends to hang out with. Later these skills, tremendously helped him with his job with bigger firms, and even with his philosophy studies. the choices were countless...he could have started his own business, become his own employee, but when he got a good offer from a big firm he changed his mind. His philosophy dissertation was a new work, focusing on mind after death, and how it interacts with the body, but with the suggestion of his supervisor he decided to continue the supervisor's work and instead get his dissertation done a year sooner than expected.
He did not compromise on anything though, he always said to his friends:"Some boundaries I shall never pass, and I don't care what's on the other side." He felt good, he felt good about how he has overwhelming control over his mental state, and the duplicates, and how that control is reflected in his real life. All was well...till that ominous day.
He was taking the subway to work. They had an important financial firm as their client, whom his company could not afford to displease. So, after a laborious weekend of debugging and integration of codes, he had planned to got up earlier than usual on that Monday morning. But he was running late, and he skipped breakfast. He wasn't used to the crowded subway transit of the morning rush. His job environment was relaxed, he often worked from home, and even if he did go to his office, he never left without having a long breakfast well after the rush hour was over. In the subway, he thought he had never seen this many people squeezed this badly together just to get to work, and seemed people were used to this because he could swore some of them were eating their breakfast in the train, or even napping while standing up, holding their hands here and there to avoid bumping into others. He did feel very hungry, he didn't remember having a big dinner last night either, and he did feel sleepy.
"Something is really wrong here. I can't breathe" He thought to himself. The train made a stop and felt his hand loosening the hold, so instead he tried to make his way through people so that he can lean on the doors. The sign on the doors read:"Do not lean on the doors." He'd never seen the sign, after all, when there was no rush hour he had always comfortably sat in the train, sometimes even stretching his legs. He felt weak. As he leaned on the door ignoring the sign, he faced a short lady in business style clothing. She was leaning on the door too, and she hold a muffin in her hand. "I'll do anything to for that muffin right now." he said to himself. He though of stopping at the next station to get something to eat before he collapses. But before he pictured the doughnut shop at the next station completely, he felt his back pushing less and less on the door. His legs went numb, he felt like he was collapsing on the ground. He moved his hands to grab something, anything, but there was none, he weakly whispered "help", as he fell down on his back. The last thing that he saw was the lady in front of him screaming, and the muffin falling off her hand. He then heard the train coming to a screeching halt, but at this point, everything was already dark.
He was still in the dark, and he started to feel pain on his back and on his cheeks. As he tried to open his eyes, he saw two big hands that were already coming at his right cheek, and a large black man's mouth fumbling something like: "Are ... okay?, the ambulance ... way."
"Ouuh." He said as the hands hit him on the cheek. "I am awake don't hit me anymore buddy." The man stopped his hands, but he wasn't listening to him, he was shouting at an Asian lady:"Get back, get back, I am a nurse, a nurse I tell you, and he needs air right now." The Asian lady was shrieking back in a worried voice: "I am a doctor I can help." But the man was persistent. In midst of all this, somebody was holding his hand, some random white guy with a rain coat and a tie, he thought he was the one that had tried to hold him while he was falling. So he squeezed his hand, the nurse was still shouting at people, and the doctor had already backed off to the front of the circle that people made around him. He was already feeling better. He tried to recognize the face of the man in tie, and he did see a blurry face at first. The face became vivid soon, but the blur wasn't what worried him. He was seeing two faces. He opened and close his eyes quickly, and turned to look at the black man. He saw two faces again. Everywhere things were in double. The black man turned to look at him:"okay, follow my finger with your eyes buddy?" As he started to move his fingers in front of his face he said:" I am Jeff by the way, what's your name?" He followed the fingers and said:"I am seeing double." The black man said:"Great, I think your brain is fine, you can move your body muscles and you can follow my finger. Lie here until the ambulance comes."
"I feel fine, I have to get to work right now." He tried to talk back to the black man's to heads. Just give me something sweet and I'll be on my way. "no way man, your pressure is too low."
He felt disappointed, and even worse, he was seeing double, everything now was double, In the midst of all this they had moved the train to the next station, and there were now police officers evacuating people from the train so that the ambulance crew can get in.
He gave up. He didn't care about his blood pressure. The ambulance crew came, he saw four people, with two beds, and four police officers pushing curious people out of the way, as the four people carried him in two beds. He saw two ambulances, and two old ladies starting down at him while he was pushed into the ambulance. In the ambulance he saw two ladies getting his blood pressure from his two right hands. He close his eyes at the sting of the two needles, and he kept them the close.
In the hospital nurses came, and needled him again and again for different experiments. All this time he kept his eyes closed. They took his heart rate with a what he could tell was a big printing machine with scopes coming out of it. Then the doctor came. The man's voice was deep and hurried but confident. He said: "The nurse told me you haven't open your eyes, and you've even refused to open them. and you're not talkative at all." He thought to himself: "easy for you to say."
"We are checking for brain damage, if your vision is blurry or anything else, we have to know. People don't faint for no reason you know." He then started pushing his hands and legs:"try to prevent me moving you arms...Ok, that seems fine, now you legs...ok..." The doctor worked almost every muscle in his body. He then said:"Everything seems all right, now, do you want to tell me what's wrong with your vision."
"I am seeing double." he said impatiently, still keeping his eyes closed. "Double? you mean you have binocular vision?" asked the doctor. "No! I am seeing double" he barked. He then opened his eyes, and pointed close to where the doctor was standing and said "I see you here, and here" while moving his fingers from right to left, where the doctor was actually standing. I see two of you Doc, I see two of this pencil you're holding, two of this nurse beside you. I am seeing duplicates." The doctor said in a surprised question as if he expected no answer:"Duplicates!?". "Doubles, I mean I see doubles every where. and they move and talk and do stuff." The doctor turned around and whispered something to the nurse, she then hurried out of the small room that he was in. "What did you tell her?" He tried not to yell.
The doctor ignored his question, looked at his notes and said: "There are many reasons one can faint, most of them are not serious, but some of them are, and if they are they tend to be very serious, cuz your brain doesn't lose hold of your body for no normal reason. If you are fed and the condition continues like in your case, we usually check for brain tumors. Now, I am going to ask you a question and you have to be honest. Have you ever had this problem before? this vision problem."
He thought for while: Have I EVER had this problem?! Oh I don't know. did I!?" He gave a smear out, and said: "Yes." There was a knock on the door, and the nurse came in, and he saw four other men following her into the room. The men divided to two pairs and stood by each side of his bed. He thought the doctor had become worried. He probably had become he had gone nuts from the brain damage, and might become agile, what else could these bulky guys be here for. The doctor nodded to the nurse and said to him:" Ok, you seem fine beside your double vision, so we're going to put you in another room, until someone comes to pick you up, and then you have to rest. We are going to scan your brain for tumors today, and until the results come up you have to rest."
He felt that he has to be there for a while. He closed his eyes again, and remembered how, Fred, his imaginary duplicated friend, had always disappeared when he had lost focus on him. "Are the duplicates losing focus when he had his eyes close?" He thought to himself. It was a long day, and the fact that he couldn't read any book or watch any TV, made it even longer. The experiments were long and boring, they put him in a bed like tube, that slided in to a machine that he could tell was CT-Scan. After the scan, the needled him again, and later in the late hours of evening the doctor showed up in his room again. This time he was carrying with a red folder in his hand. He was looking tired, a little grim too but still calm and confident. The doctor was waiting for something, and he thought it's weird, cuz he was the one who was supposed to the waiting. The doctor walked an sat beside his bed. He then looked at him and said:"I've looked at your scan results, and it seems that in your part of the brain responsible for vision you have a little something." The doctor sighed and continued. "I don't know if when this thing has popped up in there, or how old it is. We have assigned you a brain specialist and I've talked to him. We are going to move you to a different section, where he will diagnose you further."
He was expecting an straight answer. "I either live or die." He thought to himself. The doctor left, he close his eyes again to get rid of all the duplicates. He started thinking about death. He had lived a good life, up until now at least. Of all the things that thought he still needed or wanted to do, and his death would put a stop to all that, there was still something encouraging about death. There was something very promising to come. and he thought to himself again:"All this time, I've looked for something that I can be certain of, I've read books as a child, and I have made multiple realities in search of a promising truth. I've studied philosophy and I have worked on Artificial Intelligence in computer science. All my life I have devoted my self to what I thought would one day be the truth."
He thought of an Alchemist story he had read back in junior high. The alchemist was looking for one pure substance that would change lead to gold. he working daily in long hours, but in one of his experiments something exploded, and the harmful fumes of the experiment partially blinded him. He went to the best doctor in town, and the doctor told him that the alchemist must bring him 3500 gold pieces. His vision was his most important part of his life, and so he did all he could to find the gold pieces. It was laborious takes for a normal man, let alone for a blind one, but he pulled it off, and went back to the arrogant doctor. The doctor took the gold pieces, wet a piece of unwritten parchment, and put it on the alchemist's eyes. Couple of minutes after the doctor poured all the gold on alchemist and shouted at him: "This is Gold, This is Gold! This is the Gold that you created. and the substance is you. If you see this, you're blind no more." The alchemist had at that moment. He could see not with his eyes, with his heart. What the alchemist was searching for was always already there.
He thought of the story and how it had inspired him to what is most practical, to follow his passion, and search, and at the same time, to keep his grip with the reality. How he had tried to control his visions of the duplicates, and how he had made a good living for himself. He thought, how he has always seen the truth that he was looking for as something eternal, how he has thought even in philosophy the search is never-ending. But now, he was lying on his bed, with animated and un-animated duplicates around him whenever he intended to open his eyes. He shut his eyes even tighter at the thought of all this.
All this time, he has forgot, about one thing, and now that he could see it. How can he have missed it, how can all the philosophers and great minds that have come before him, that have made the biggest claims to the eternal truths, how can they have missed this. How can so countless methodologies to rid us off our biases and doubts to get the essence of something indisputable could have failed to see this. and yet he was seeing it here with his eyes closed.
Death is inevitable. It was always there, just like his inseparable shadow from light of the sun, death was there, the inseparable shadow from the clarity of his life. The clearer he had known the meaning of life, the cleared he should have seen the meaning of death, its inevitability and infinitude. Death as not being anymore. He thought about all the scientists, philosophers, mystics who had discussed death. But how can you discuss death...
He was not a religious man, but it didn't matter know anyways. Whatever kind of after life he believed in, death was going to stop his life, his being in this world that he knows. It was undeniable and undoubtable. Even if he had believed in an after life just like this one, with the same people, his being gone from this world, changed his life on this world in a fundamental way, and that change was so dramatic. Even if he could think of death as a trip from A to B where A and B are so similar, that they are almost identical, then his departure from A to B would make the difference between the two worlds. No matter how he looked at his death, he find it anything less than extraordinary, and to think how he had forgot about it all his life. One thing was for certain here, if he would die, his existence would change, and that change would be fundamental, whether it would be complete stop, or some transfer into some other life. His existence as he knows it right now would not be anymore. He would not be anymore. All of the sentences that would use him as a subject would have to have past verbs only, and he hated past verbs....there was unnecessary 'ed' at the end, or some irregular less lively form. 'was' was with 3 letters and 'is' with two. And he already hated 'was' the 'w' was so un-animated relative to the 'i' in 'is'. The conditional: "if you die, you 'are' no more" had to be true.
But it got even worse. Not only the conditional was true, the premise of the conditional was going to become true, at least if his tumor was deadly enough. "Or lively enough."He repeated the reflection of his words, talking to himself. He gave a smile at the irony. His tumor had to be lively enough for it to become deadly enough for him. He was still in alone in the room. Nobody could think he is crazy again, and so he turned his smile into laughter. The irony was even greater than he initially thought.
He remembered how he has celebrated his birthdays with candles and gifts and a few people he had known when he was younger and with music and large speakers when he was older. How he, like any other had celebrated cherished this life so forcefully to forget what shaped the horizon of meaning for it all along. He remembered his turning 20, and how had thought he is becoming old, he remembered graduating from university and thinking the same thing. He remembered his 30th birthday, and he thought at least the first stage of his life is well gone. But he had never so clearly compared these moments to reference point in the future. His preoccupation with life stopped that. 30 was a number starting form zero, and what other could it have been. But the truth was, the origin of his life had not been his birth, it was going to be his death and the date being unknown made it all the more extraordinarily meaningful.
All these thoughts...so brilliant and so new to him, he had to write them down and he had all the time in the world. In the course of the next couple of days he had to wait for the doctors to decide upon his condition based on their tests. Early on in this waiting game he called the nurse and asked for a pencil and paper. When the nurse came back his eyes were open. He had to get used to the double vision if he was going to write. The nurses handed him two pencils and he grabbed them with his two right hands. It was still very weird. he turn right to see who the second hand belongs too for the thousands time, but there was obviously no one there. He started scribbling down on the hospital bed's table which was designed exclusively for eating tasteless hospital food in an uncomfortable fashion.
Finally his door opened and the the brain specialist and his own doctor came in. He stopped writing. The doctors had their session, and it was now time to tell him the final results. It was his doctor and the brain specialist. The brain specialist looked more senior, his two heads had a some hair left but a few of them were still black. His doctor looked at the brain specialist. The specialist nodded towards him, and his doctor approached his bed and sat once again beside him he looked tired again, confident, but not relaxed at all. He looked at the specialist once more. This time the specialist didn't nod, he moved to the far side of the room where a chair was waiting for him. The doctor then turned to him and said:"There is no easy way to break this down to you." He moved in the bed to properly face the doctor, and before the doctor finished his sentence he smiled and said:"It's ok, just tell me how much time do I have left." The doctor was now looking down at his chest now, as if trying to summon up his powers to come up with the next words: "You have less than two weeks. I am sorry, we couldn't specify an exact date, but the disease would first make you blind, and then it would become painful." He smiled again, this time more to calm the good doctor, and said: "don't worry about the time, I actually rather not know about the time, is there anything you can give me to reduce the pain when it strikes?" The doctor was surprised. He could tell from his four eyes widening and then looking at the specialist, who had stood up at the what heard from him. "well, I know from the past, that some people in your situation rather leave the hospital, and do something they really want to do. hm...Sure." He lowered his voice. " I'll give you some strong pain killers, give the 911 a call when you felt you're going blind and then take the pills." He didn't want to have pain"Thanks." a little relieved. The doctor stood up, and walked said:"You can go when the nurse comes, let me know if there is anything else I can help you with." "I will" he replied. The doctors left, and he could bet he had heard the specialist telling the doctor:"see, it wasn't so hard, but you got it easy. It's usually much harder to tell a normal person that they are dying."
He didn't wait for the nurse to come. He knew what he had to do. He wanted to share what he has discovered in these moments with the world. He thought to himself about the consequences of his discovery, of how we ignore death, and it can help us live, and produce morals and ethics if we always remember death. He thought about persons, and what makes us human and not pigs. If all we do is what is most practical, then that is just what an animal does. He was thinking whether in his life he has been an intelligent animal, or an actual person. The nurse came, and brought his clothes. His brother had come to pick him up from the hospital. Nobody knew the news yet, but they would soon find out, and with it they would hopefully realize partly at least what he had realized. His brother was cool, he had the ability to swallow big news like this, and he would definitely be the first one to know. He thought he would make a burden on his brother to tell others about it. After all, he didn't want to waste anytime. In the car, his brother listened to him, he didn't cry or anything, but he turned down the music and remained quite for a long time. "he is taking it in" he thought.
He didn't waste anytime, he took out a tissue paper from the box that his brother kept in the car, and used the pencil from the the hospital to jot down some notes on the napkin:
The car stopped at his parent's place. He looked at his brother, his brother looked at him and said: "if we don't have a lot of time, we might as well start here, but I'll promise you to convince so that you can have this time to yourself." His brother was right. He did not have two weeks, he had two weeks in max. But he had no reason to be sad about anything, not that he was happy about it either. Everything was just normal, he just wanted to let the world know about what he has found out. They went upstairs...It was very hard for his parents, but his brother was really convincing, and his parents were very understanding. After spending some time there, he went to his old room. He felt sad now, his family was naturally very emotional about what was happening, but they understood and so did he.
It was here that he had started studying philosophy, here that he has written his first lines of codes. His walls were still full of notes from his essay, and quotes from his favorite philosophers. In one day, his life had changed, not because he was facing death, but because he had found death, and he seemed to have understood death. There was only one more thing he needed to write, and then he thought he can video himself speaking his notes, and put the video on the internet, and distribute it within his family. He would never be able to let the whole world know. But so long as it was his world that could know, it would be enough for him. He laughed again at how he could be so appropriately practical about his goals. He opened his laptop and started typing up the last scripts. This time he was talking to others.
"can u relate your values to your behavior, or do you relate your values to other's behavior and your behavior to yourself. You impeach, people, whether they are absent or present, about what they think, and how they think it, or about people about what they do and how they do it. You hate some of others, and those who you hate, you can easily come to hate. And these others are those who you should be fearful about…because you don't know them…
You should be afraid of them, just as the small children are afraid of lonely old strangers in their neighborhood. They are the dam loneliest people, and small children are afraid of them, because when people are lonely you don't know what they are thinking about. When they are lonely, they are weird; they are outcasts in thought and mind. Yes you should be afraid of the ones that you do not even know, and you are afraid of the ones that you don't know. But sometimes kids are afraid of the old lady out of a respect for her elderly position, out of respect for considering all the things that she is, and they don't know because she is so lonely that nothing about her could be found out. But you could also be afraid of the old lady in another way…you could hate her and be afraid of her. You could hate her and be afraid of her…
So you would hate her, and you would be afraid of her…but times passes, and without knowing the old lady, you start to develop an understanding of her as though she is a black box. You plug an input into her, and take something out of her. You think you know her, you think that is all there is to know about her, and you start thinking that you are not afraid anymore. You would have the illusion of losing fear, and now only the hate remains. But because the fear is still really there, and because there is no bravery being replaced by it (bravery does not replace fear, unless the unknown becomes fully known in itself, which is impossible). So…the hate remains, and you start your exploitations…from the kid who was afraid out of respect, you become the kid who is afraid out of hate, and now that you seem to think that you have not anything to be afraid of, you become the kid, who hold the burns the old lady, as if you're holding one of your old dolls on fire. You torture her, and torture her, take her head off, as if it is you sisters’ doll’s head…."
As he was writing, something attracted his attention. His room had been left for a while, and over the years had become a sort of storage room by his parents, partly at least. He was so focused on his work, that he had forgot to pay attention to the parts of his past lying there. On the furthest corner of the room from him, was their old TV set, it was color TV, but had no remote control. He went to look at the two TVs. Beside it were some of his Mother's supplies, like their sugar, rice, and potatoes. What got him to the corner though was not any old memory, there was a small ant going in a tiny circle in an unnatural fashion. He looked closer at the two ants. They were upside down. The legs were moving wildly in the air looking for a grip. There was something wrong with one of the legs and one of the hands. They had somehow been twisted. The ant was shaking his legs so furiously that he could almost hear them both shriek. He tried to help the ant on to his legs with the tip of his pen. As soon as the ant's feet touched the ground, the movement changed, but it was only after he tipped the ant, that he understood the real cause of its misery. The legs on one side of the ant were straightened as if crushed by an unbearable force. The ant was dragging its legs. But because one of the hands was also injured it couldn't walk straight, after some steps, the ant would tip itself over.
He thought of killing the ant, to rid it out of this never-ending misery. But then he thought of himself, and how life has become so valuable to him in the face of death. So he tipped the ant back on its legs again. He then took out the napkin he had wrote his notes on in the car, and pushed the ant on them. The ant started walking, it was still suffering, the movements were confident and slow, but the surface of the napkin, now black and white with words of death and life, was not straight, and so the ant could not tip itself over. "Suffering is inseparable part of life." He thought. He looked around for another ant. There was one passing by the rice sacks. He tried to shake off the mesmerized creature off the napkin to where it could get some help from his own kind. As soon as the broken leg touched the ground, the other ant, starting running. "What the hell!" He almost whispered these thoughts.
He let to helpless ant up to the napkin again and took it closer to the other ant. The other ant again started running, with a speed that an ant could hardly be capable of. He getting frustrated, his blood reaching boiling point. Here he was at his final days, trying to make a very simple, doable good deed, and it seemed impossible. He felt anger, he didn't know why but he did. He pushed the other ant by force up the napkin. The two ants were no on the same piece of ground hovering in the air. At his point, The other ant was moving furiously, and the mesmerized one, was almost standing still. The other ant was at all times maintaining the furthest distance from his injured fellow, carefully scanning the edges of the napkin for a way out of this circular jail that lead him to where it was doing its best to avoid. "How the other one could be so unlike a person." He thought. He then quickly reflected:"A person would make reflections on what they desire. This ant though, undoubtedly run as fast as it can, it run by its instincts. There is no reflection for him but his survival. He has sensed approaching the danger zone, and the is running for his life. He is running for his life even when the broken-leg follows him."
He looked at the four ants...and took them beside his laptop. He then gently let the furious ant off the napkin, and he left the broken legged creature where was. He thought of people, and how they can be just like this ant and the other ant. At the sight of danger, even a slight harm, or un-benefit, choosing what is easy over what is right. He started typing again, he knew now how to articulate his final message:
"And despite all that…you think all this is being done just reasonably, that she is what she is, and that you know what her IS is…and that, that is all about her. You think you know, and you exploit her so much, that you start to believe in your delusions. You start to think that you are right. And that is all that matter…
Pity pityyy…we are all made hypocrites…our pride blinds our eyes and breaks our legs and we fail to see, and even if we do see, we fail to walk there…
Gradually…forgetfulness encompasses your hate and your pride…and you just exploit, and at the same time you develop values that are good in themselves, but that are totally out of line with that disgusting blood and mud that lurks underneath your forgetful skin.
All the values then are upside down. God forbid you more wealth, more power, more authenticity and more beauty.
The choice has far moved from being between right or wrong to between right and easy. And you always choose easy…and now…that you've grown from that little bastard kid to a full grown un-adult, you choose the easy so easily, because you don't even care what the hard choice is…choosing easy is a value more important than all of your other values put together. And that by itself…it is not only wrong…but it makes you what is called a self-denying hypocrite. And that I cannot hate enough…me, I cannot hate enough. I cannot hate myself enough, and now that I have two weeks left, I have to do something about it."
He left closed the laptop. He knew what he had to do. He took the pencil again and left a note, for his brother to read and record his work and put on the internet when he could, in case he was not there anymore. and tomorrow after his breakfast with his family, he felt his double visions disappearing. Every thing was slipping away. It was time. "Good that I've really lived his yesterday really as if he was supposed to die today." he thought to himself. He took the pills the doctor had gave him, and called an ambulance, his parents and his brother walked to the ambulance. It was as if he was going away for a few weeks. His message has got into his brother, and into his parents. He was sure that it would make it into some other people as well.
He died on the same day. He never became famous for what he wrote, and never impacted the whole world. But he had an impact on those that he knew, and that was his own world and so it was more than enough for him. Death was no longer an obstacle, it was the meaning of life, and it brought with it a most promising message that a medium can bring, life is well worth living the way you choose it to be.
