And They Were Three

 

            The elderly man stood watching the disconnected chaos taking place far below him, saddened by the path and choices so many were making that would lead to their undeniable and unavoidable permanent state of self-inflicted suffering. "Coercion?" he thought, "No, punishment maybe? No. This needs to conclude based on their own decisions, their own freewill, and the natural results of their own actions and thoughts."

              He paced the narrow, rocky ledge upon which stood, looking upon the intricate interaction of so many thoughts, ideas, suggestions, and actions of these seemingly innumerable people, skittering about like insects. Most of them lived simply to survive, to be distracted, and to live out their lives in the most comfortable manner possible. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and speed dialed "2" to hear his son answer with a friendly 'hello'.

              "Son, I'm overlooking the city of New Amsterdam at the moment, and I probably don't have to tell you just how disappointing the view is from here," he said. "In what really should be a simple process of living and interacting among themselves, most of them somehow seem to just not understand or if they do, they don't seem to care. Please come out and visit me here, I've got something I need to discuss with you."

              The two men stood together, looking upon the city, grieved at the numerous foolish decisions, the constant rebellion, and the hostility of so many. "Here's the plan, son," he said, "I want you to go live among them, become like them in appearance but not in behavior, they need to understand what life can actually be, when not spent on distraction and pleasure. Of course, we'll stay in contact until you grow into maturity."

              His son snapped his fingers, suddenly felt incredibly small, vulnerable, and hungry, to open his eyes staring into the face of three of them. Cold, wet, slimy, and disconnected, he had never felt so alone before, to be quickly wrapped up in a blanket, vigorously rubbed, and explored by two of the female species.

              In what seemed a mere instant, compared to his previous existence with his father, he found himself living in an apartment building, surrounded by a dizzying array of these simple, dirty, and ignorant creatures, all making bizarre, ill informed, and foolish decisions, unknowingly he assumed, leading themselves down a path away from that which was good, right, and beautiful. He left for work on particular morning with plans for a Victorian type of dinner table in mind, sharing the elevator ride with an incredible obese middle-aged man.

              Over the many following months, he watched the man grow larger and larger, always taking the elevator, never the stairs and eventually finding it impossible to pick up anything that he may have dropped, his shoes perpetually untied, based he assumed on the fact that he couldn't reach his feet. Tiring of riding the elevator with Robert, whose name he eventually learned after introducing himself, he decided to take the stairs, where he met David, the exact inverse of Robert. Shockingly thin, perpetually sweaty, and always speed walking or running, he would always say hello when they met on the stairs.

              Even evening after returning home from work, he would watch David run around the block more times that he could count, becoming thinner and thinner as the weeks passed, eventually reducing himself to a strange, waddle type of run that was painful to watch. One winter afternoon, he took the day off from work and sat in the apartment lobby reading a book about self-deception, to see Robert and David exit the building, easily the strangest couple he ever had the opportunity to witness. A regular person would have found humor in the stark contrast, but he only felt pity for them both, as they both suffered from the same problem, a mistaken view of self.

              He finished his book, slipped it into his back pocket and feeling bored with his decision to stay home that day, he then chose to visit the hospital, fighting against a slight breeze, carrying a few flakes of snow for the six blocks to his destination. Shaking himself free of the light dusting of snow, he stomped his feet clean and sat down in the waiting room, watching for someone interesting with whom to interact and hopefully help, if they were open to such a thing.

              After the first hour, he saw nothing but the usual elderly with various aches and pains, young parents with small children needing their vaccines and the occasional medical attention until a young man came in holding an amazingly thick folder. As he was sitting near the front desk, he listened to the young man list off his various maladies, some physical and most, in his opinion, psychologically induced or imaginary illnesses. The man sat down near him and began to discuss his current medical condition, a disease he believed that he had picked up while traveling on the subway.

              Three hours into the conversation, he introduced himself as Julio, and shared each page of his folder, naming off more diseases, infections, and physical trauma than he could keep track off, thus necessitating the need for the folder. He and the young man exchanged phone numbers, promising to stay in touch and help one another in the event of any emergency.

              He had just stepped into his apartment building when his phone began to ring, revealing Julio's name, an event which became a normal exercise nearly every hour for the next month, outside of course of normal sleeping hours. On his way to work on the last day of the week, he sat on the bus thinking about Robert, David, and Julio, marveling at how in these three simple individuals, all of the problems of mankind in general were exhaustively exemplified.

              Over the passage of time, years bleeding into decades, he took a day off of work to attend Robert's funeral, the casket at the front of the church being possibly the largest coffin he had ever seen. While it was an open casket service, he could not motivate himself to walk to the front and gaze upon Robert's bloated corpse, horrified at looking upon the body of a man that died far too early because of his lack of self-control, his love for food, and his hatred of anything that required physical exertion.

              Two years later, he received a phone call from David's sister, inviting him to his funeral, explaining that David had frequently spoke quite highly of him and wanted him to be there. Taking another day off of work, he sat near the front of the church and forced himself to approach the open casket, gazing upon what seemed to be bones with a thin layer of skin over them. Saddened by David's similar yet inverse approach to life as Robert's, he wondered how two grown, intelligent men could fall into such convoluted self-deception and self-hatred.

              As he walked home that afternoon, he placed a call to Julio, determined to not lose another friend when the right words, the right motivation, and loving interaction could turn him around from his path of psychologically induced sickness. Pouring all of his thoughts, money, and effort into helping Julio, over the next year, he began to see a slow change in his thoughts, his speech, and his behavior. The change in Julio was a remarkable cycle to observe, seeing him become balanced and healthy in his approach to life, focusing on helping others rather than inventing diseases and self-diagnosing.

              Over the next decade, he watched Julio put his many years of medical experience and knowledge into practice, becoming a general practitioner, with a bed side manner that was remarkable, beautiful, and sympathetic, using everything he had learned from his years of study, and the influence of his friend's motivating words.

              The son returned home to his father and began to explain all that had happened, to be stopped midway through his planned out monolog, being reminded that the three relationships he had developed had been observed from the beginning, and receiving a hearty congratulations for positively impacting Julio's life, so that Julio could make a difference in the lives of so many others, a pattern that would continue for the next many generations.

              Father and son sat together for the next several millennia, seeing the beauty in what he had begun with Julio, the generation that he influenced as well, turning into a multi-branching tree that impacted the lives of tens of thousands of people.