Redleaf

Zac and I silently made our way down several flights of stairs, pushing aside the odd flower that dangled across our path. The moon shone brightly overhead. We could see its reflection dancing on the water beyond the boundary of the shark nets.

As we approached the water's edge, all that could be heard was the comforting rhythm of small waves lazily lapping at the shore. All that could be felt was the mild summer breeze on our faces; the sand between our toes as we kicked off our shoes.

The beach was empty. The city was asleep, dreaming; millions of people constructing worlds and adventures and stories and nightmares in their minds as they snuggled up to their partners and their pillows.

Zac and I walked along the curved pier that wrapped around the small beach, doing our best to avoid the splinters. When we reached the center of the semi-circle — the furthest point out in the harbor — we plonked ourselves down on the wood, dangled our legs over the edge, and looked out at the city's silhouette on the horizon.

"Remember how we used to come down here all the time when we were younger?" Zac asked. "We used to talk about all the things we wanted to do and all the places we wanted to go. I don't think we've hung out here since we moved to New York. How long ago was that? Six years?"

"Jesus! That's been a long time. And I'm getting old, Zac! I don't want to get old. I want to stay young forever."

"Why don't we build a spacecraft? We can just fly away like Peter Pan and escape the humdrum of everything. Fly away at the speed of light!"

"No," I shook my head. "That won't work. We'll still age at a normal pace, but when we return to Earth, everything and everyone we love will be gone. Time does that. You can't escape it. You can't outrun it. It just is."

"You know, I'm really disappointed you won't be getting cryogenically frozen when you die. I'm going to thaw out in a thousand years, and I won't be able to explore the future with my zany sidekick." He looked at me and frowned. "It's very sad."

"I know I say YOLO a lot, but I really don't believe you only live once. And according to our little intellectual adventure, I seem to be right about that: there is no beginning or end to our existence. We just change perspectives."

"How do you know that?"

"It's just simple logic," I replied. "If my consciousness exists, then I can assume it always will exist, without making any claims. My consciousness just is. It's fundamental. If you want to claim that my consciousness ceases to exist at some point, the burden of proof is on you."

"Can't I just point to your dead, decaying body as evidence that you cease to exist?"

"No. We've already established, from first principles, that your consciousness is not in your body — your body is in your consciousness. If I put an AI bot in a computer game and then 'killed' him, his body would still be in the game. The body can't just disappear in a puff of magic smoke, so of course it remains in the game world and decays. How could it do anything else? Meanwhile, the AI bot's perspective could easily shift to another realm in the game. The bots in his previous life would observe his dead, decaying body while he is off having fun in a new life.

Therefore, killing the body is not evidence that consciousness ceases to exist. That prevailing assumption is just the result of lazy thinking. I imagine when I die, I'll be all like, 'peace out', and leave the specificity of my body, then enter another one. I'll have a new adventure from a different perspective."

"I bet you'd reincarnate as a sunflower. Or a gazelle, actually. Pandora and Bryce and I have agreed that if you were an animal, you would be a gazelle — just happily jumping around like a derp."

"Thanks, Zac," I said. "And you'll come back as a doorknob."

"As long as it's a rather large knob, I feel like it will have captured the essence of my soul." He smiled at his own joke.

"Did I tell you about that time my brother got suspended from boarding school for drawing knobs on the wall?"

"No," Zac said. "But do go on."

"Mom got this call from the boarding master, and he said, 'Mrs. Durkin, your son has been caught drawing knobs on the wall in shaving cream'. Mom was really puzzled, and was like 'Knobs? Why was he drawing doorknobs?' The boarding master cleared his throat awkwardly and said, 'Penises, Mrs. Durkin. He's been caught drawing penises.' Callum got suspended two days before the holidays started, so he basically got an extended vacation for his delinquency. What a genius."

Zac laughed. "Classic."

"But seriously," I turned to him. "Do you ever wonder if anyone would notice if you just disappeared? Do you ever wonder if you add any value to the world? If anyone would care if you were to just hop on a spacecraft and fade away into oblivion?"

"Geez, Nikki. That's awfully dark."

"Oh — I mean — it's just — I don't mean it like that. It's just that I wonder sometimes. Do I add any value to this world?" I stared out onto the harbor. "I've always had this deep, deep craving to be of service to the world somehow. I don't know... it's just something in my soul, if you want to call it that. It's like, I used to feel so guilty for how lucky I was as a child. It just felt so wrong, so unfair. It was like I won the genetic lottery and was born into a loving family with amazing parents and siblings. Then I went through school, and I happened to be able to retain large amounts of information in my mind and regurgitate it in an exam, and that made me smart by society's standards. I could paint and sculpt and create things, too. I just felt guilty. Like, why did I get so much when others have so little? I decided I could feel less guilty about it if I just used my genetic lottery winnings to help people and be of service to the world somehow.

So I spent my teenage years jumping through hoops like a show pony — being a high performer. An adult would clap their hands and I'd jump for them, just for some praise and a pat on the head. I thought that was what I needed to do to add value to the world.

But as I got older, I became so disillusioned. The adults all seemed mad. Why was I supposed to jump through the hoop, anyway? I didn't even like the hoop. What was the point of it all? Why was I playing these games? Why was anyone playing these games? The games don't make any sense!

Actually, I remember sitting in a coffee shop in Thailand last year when I was at that Muay Thai training camp-"

"The one you ran off to with the Austrian yodeller?"

"He didn't yodel," I sighed. "But yes. The truth is, I partially went there because I could feel another wave of existential anxiety coming on, and my mind wouldn't shut up. I thought maybe kickboxing for several hours a day would help calm it down. Besides, how much can you really know about yourself if you've never been in a fight? Every evening I died, and every evening I was born again. Resurrected."

Zac smiled. "Well, this is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time."

"That's right. And I don't want to die without any scars. That's the thing about a fight — No fear. No Distractions. The ability to let that which does not matter truly slide."

"At least you remember the first rule."

"The first rule of what?"

"Fi-"

"Shhh!" I held a finger to my lips. "God is listening. He's in the air. He's in the water. He's eavesdropping on us right now. You can't talk about Fight Club!"

"You-"

"Anyway, back to my deep and meaningful story. So, I was talking to this guy in a coffee shop in Thailand. He was like, 'Wow, you're really living the dream.' And I thought to myself, 'Am I?' I mean, I've always chased my dreams. I have. If I want something, I go after it. But I also felt like I wasn't adding any value to the world; I wasn't fulfilling my potential. Because if I was fulfilling my potential, wouldn't I be more successful? Wouldn't I be richer, and smarter, and kinder, and prettier, and better in every way?

I just felt like a failure. I hated my mind. I hated my curiosity. I would just become obsessed with questions. And I tried taming it and reigning it in, but it was always hopeless. Every attempt to corral it would only make it ten times worse.

Even when I was sitting on the floor of my room in Thailand, balling my eyes out in frustration, it's like my mind would hover over itself and ask, 'Why?' Why am I upset? Hmmm… isn't this fascinating. It's like I have a loop running in my consciousness. It's a bit of code that's tied itself in a knot. A belief that my value is determined by how much money I make, and the possessions I own, and how pretty I am, and the success of my career, and how much others approve of me. Oh, and this little cluster of belief loves to compare itself to other people. I guess it's been trained its whole life to do that. What an interesting Bayesian inference engine we have here — taking in data and modeling its reality with such a complex interconnected web of neurons. And then — oh yes — I see it. That splinter of curiosity is aggravating the knot, causing it to tighten. It's poking and prodding that belief system. And now, as a result, I feel like a failure. It's all perfectly logical: I think I add no value to the world unless I am performing like a show pony. I am choosing not to perform like a show pony and following my curiosity instead. But I believe I should be performing like a show pony. And now I am sad and angry at myself. Fascinating. And I just remember thinking, at the time —  why am I here? What is the point of it all? Do I even add any value to this world?"

Zac turned his head, looked me in the eye, and said, "Nikki, I'm not a sentimental guy, so it pains me to say it… but you add value to my world. You're not here to make other people happy, you know. You're not here to live your life for them and please them and play their silly games and fulfill their expectations of who you should be. You can be anyone you want to be. You set the rules."

"I know," I sighed. "It's like, I know that logically. I know it's all bullshit. But subconsciously, so much of my self-worth is still tied to being a high achiever. If I'm not achieving, then I have no value, and no one will ever love me." I turned to Zac. "That's fucked up, isn't it?"

We both laughed.

"There is just such a gap between who I think I should be, and who I actually am. Because I'm kinda weird-"

"I know," Zac said. "Believe me, I know."

"But most people don't know that. I've spent my whole life trying to mute myself to fit in and seem normal. But I'm actually kinda weird."

Zac laughed. "I know."