Scenes You Should Try

Imagine you woke up tomorrow and you weren’t the same person you went to sleep as. In vain, you try to remember who you were, because you are almost certain you’re no longer who you used to be. When you look around, the setting seems completely unfamiliar. The room is just big enough to fit a small family but nothing else—one bed, one window, and a door leading to nowhere desired. Feeling bewildered, you get up and walk towards your door, but a lady grabs your arm and with unrestrained compassion tells you, “It isn’t safe to go outside.” Off in the distance, but not distant enough to spare your room from trembling, you hear noises that can only be described as explosions of a damned world. That same lady tells you the duck and cover your head. It dawns on you that this lady you’ve never seen before must be your mother, and she’s scared, so you’re scared. Again, everything around you begins to shake and somewhere, beyond, something or some people are being torn to shreds, and you, soon, may be torn to shreds.

Of course, for some people, the scene that I just described doesn’t need to be imagined. They are living this life, and the sound of detonation, too close for comfort, is not just expected, but as normal as any constant in their life. As common as an iced coffee or a stroll through the park, the comparison may seem crude but these situations, as different as they are, in some regard aren’t so different at all. The life that affords you, or anyone, a stroll in the park, was no more destined or deserved than a life that is routinely interrupted by bombs blazing. The things that led to what you are doing right now have so little to do with you. We live under this assumption that our lives are truly our own, but the choices that we have are choices that we made. But what if you were born and the options you take for granted weren’t available to you? How could you make them? 

I’ve come to believe that life is something that is merely happening to us, or to the person we consider to be us. Who amongst us decided to be born? Didn’t we all merely one day realize that we were alive? Through no fault or action by you, life was thrust upon on you like a sudden rainstorm and you were forced, indeed forced, to stand in it. For some, that force is made hidden or easily ignored because the circumstance they find themselves in is bearable, even enjoyable. You walk through this life you never asked for unencumbered, even if recognized, by the sheer luck of it all. When you hear of places and people that have been ravaged by the lives they find themselves in, you think, “That’s terrible, they don’t deserve that!” And they don’t, and if you can say that, equally, you could just as well say they also don’t deserve “this”. It’s a frightening proposition, to consider that the concreteness of your being is as happenstance as pieces of grain in a field. You aren't special, you aren’t anything but what you have found yourself to be. We’re all playing roles in a film long written. The amount of things that had to happen for you, for everyone to be as they are, number in the infinite. Indeed, the random awesomeness of it all is akin to the birth of any galaxy. 

Which parts of yourself did you choose? Did you choose your family? Did you choose when and where you were born? Of course not but surely, there has to be some part of yourself you chose. You chose what clothes to wear, you chose your friends, you chose to watch that show you love so much? Certainly there are things you choose everyday but only because you could. You never have to choose between ducking and covering or if outside is safe today, or if you should leave because home is no longer safe. If you did have to make these choices this would be who you are. How much of that life would’ve been up to you?

I think of ourselves as the sum of our experiences (environment) and the circumstance of a birth (genetics) and I believe that we have a little to do with it. There is nothing distinct about me that couldn’t be found somewhere else. There isn’t a thought that I’ve had that hasn’t been had, nor a feeling that hasn’t been felt. We are unique forgeries put together by the some of our immeasurable parts, and amalgamation of things that began eons ago. 

There’s a child somewhere right now, crying. They fell while playing. They aren’t yet aware of the magnitude of their existence and how completely beholden they are to the whims of it. Their mother tries to console them. She knows he scraped his knee because that happens, and the beauty of playing can be chased by the pain of falling. She wants to tell him that life, with all its beauty and horror, is something that he will have to endure, if only because everyday he finds himself alive. 

Everyday, we all find ourselves living a life that we have come to recognize. The streets we know like the back of our hand, the people around us we fill our time with, they all are as though it had to be this way. And maybe it did; I only assert that we didn’t have much to do it with it. If outside for you is a war zone, I apologize that something so random could be so brutal, and that life for you is more about survival and the choices related to it. If life for you seems boundless and the opportunities you can make for yourself feel limitless, I merely hope to make you understand how truly lucky—and undeserving—you are of any of it. The whole damn thing. The stage was set, the characters written, some roles are just worse than others.