Without Purpose, Without Meaning

 

Lucas sat on his bed, alone in his bedroom, staring across the street at Michelle’s bedroom window, seeing her outline occasionally move behind her sheer curtains, wondering if she even knew that he existed or even cared. His view from his third-floor window gave him an advantageous perspective upon the city below, with its seemingly random activity, as well as a direct view of her bedroom. Though she was two years older than he and had graduated the previous year, he still had his hopes on winning her attention.

Each day as he saw her return to her parent’s home, after work he assumed, his frustration only continued to grow, wondering about the meaning of it all, if there actually was any meaning, for it seemed that life consisted of being born, growing up, receiving an education, finding a marriage partner, working a relatively pointless job, and then dying to only fade into obscurity, with the majority of people being forgotten within a few years.

He was frequently tempted to skip school one day and follow Michelle to her job, passionate to know as much about her as he could. Though he had plans for college after graduating from high school, he somehow knew that if he left without making contact and hopefully a good impression upon her, he would never see her again, becoming absorbed and distracted by university life and finding a job thereafter.

His momentary lapse into introspection and macrospection led him down a rabbit hole for the next week. Initially playing it safe, he stretched his comfort zone of social interaction, asking a wide variety of people about their views on personal responsibility, their long-term goals, and their aspirations for the following generations. After dipping into the most common social groups, wealthy businessmen, stay at home moms, new college graduates, and small business owners, he pushed himself even harder and possibly dangerously and began interacting with the fringes of society. His next wave of questions and answers came from homeless people, gang members, prostitutes, and a handful of politicians, all of whom, including those from his first cycle of questions, seemed to have the same basic ideas and hopes.

Taking down notes from memory after each interaction, he was surprised to find that everyone, regardless of race, economic status, social perspective, or how others viewed them, all wanted the same thing. “Everyone wants to be loved, to be happy, to have their basic needs met, and to love someone,” he thought, as he spent a late evening comparing notes and writing up a final summary of all that he had learned. Tempted to descend to the family living room and share his findings with his parents, he restrained himself, wanting to spend a good deal of time thinking about it all.

He padded his way down the stairs to the kitchen to pour himself a glass of orange juice before bed, when a thought occurred to him about faith and religion. “I didn’t take that factor into account at all,” he thought, criticizing himself for overlooking such an obvious and important detail. “I guess I’m not done yet. This will add an entirely new layer to human perspective, because religion is one thing that many people are extremely passionate about.”

Finishing his juice, he returned to his room to pull up an anonymous search engine, being in New York he trusted that he would be able to find a wide variety of neighborhoods built around either ethnic or religious commonality. His first search consisted of identifying an exhaustive list of religions, some of whom he had never before heard. He discovered twelve different neighborhoods relatively close to his home that housed twelve different religious groups, while the other six groups would need to be interacted with via email or chat.

Creating a map and a plan for the next three weeks, he knew that simply telling his parents the nature and goal of this project would likely stir up feelings of concern, to be followed by warning about the danger of interacting with strangers in unknown neighborhoods. He stood from his desk, paced his bedroom, all the while keeping his eye on Michelle’s bedroom window but only once catching a shadowy sign of movement. It was when his eyes fell upon his anthropology textbook that the simplest solution came to mind. "I'll explain it as part of my research for a school assignment,” he thought. “There’s no argument against that, for sure.”

He returned to his desk, solidified his approach to visiting the multiple neighborhoods, planning on one visit every other school day, not wanting to impose on the freedom of his weekends. He turned on his favorite streaming service and performed his daily calisthenics to the latest Metallica album. Thirty minutes later, he stripped down to his boxers, collapsed on his chair and gave himself twenty minutes to cool down before taking a shower. After a tepid shower and a shave, he slipped into his pajamas and spent the next fifteen minutes casually chatting with his parents before bed.

The next morning he stayed in bed as long as he dared, waiting for his father to leave for work, to then eat breakfast and explain his latest homework assignment to his mother, knowing that she was relatively easy to emotionally manipulate, where his father would be much more logical and rigid in his opinions, a discussion in which he did not want to engage.

After he stepped off the bus at the end of the day, he sent a brief text to his mother, reminding her that he would be a little later than normal as he needed to visit the Orthodox Jewish community on his way home. Interacting with four different men in that community before darkness fell, he feigned the illusion of spiritual interest, hinting that he had been tormented as of late with questions about God, about the future, and about the possibility of the afterlife.

This became Lucas’ pattern for the next three weeks, transitioning from one neighborhood to the next, giving the same story of spiritual interest, and taking notes from memory after each encounter. In all honesty, it was in the Baptist community, predominantly black, that he found the most joy, the most acceptance, and the most excitement. He had never experienced a group of people so excited about their faith and the beauty and joy of the afterlife as he did among them. His initial conversation was with a middle-aged man at the local barbershop, who then directed him to the local Baptist church where he would find several Grandmothers thrilled at the prospect of sharing their faith with the unusual, little white kid from an entirely different community.

After three weeks, he completed his information gathering exercise, deliberately avoiding the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormons, knowing them well enough to see their lack of reason and lack of willingness to question their own faith. “Anything that new cannot be legitimate,” he thought. “I’m not going to waste my time.”

Lucas returned home from school the next day to hear the doorbell ring, followed by the sounds of a pleasant and polite conversation between his mother and what sounded like two young women. Quietly descending the stairs, he obscured himself around a corner to hear the all too familiar words of Jehovah’s Witness missionaries. He revealed himself from his hiding place, slipped into a position of authority to excuse his mother and ask leading questions of the young women. Content and unsurprised with the cold, impersonal, and analytical answers he received, he showed them the door and asked them to never return.

By the end of the week, he consolidated all of his notes in the shape of a paper, disguised as an assignment, both thrilled and somewhat confused by his findings. With the exception of the Baptist community that had been so kind and accepting, he found that the predominate view among all others was that of making life as comfortable as possible and being nice with a common thread of doing good works to earn their way into eternal bliss. The only exception was that of the Buddhists and the Hindu’s, with their concept of loss of identity to be absorbed into the ultimate reality as a drop of water disappears into the ocean.

He shared his findings with his parents and could see their positive and pleased response at the conclusions that he had drawn. That evening after darkness fell, he threw away all of his social fears and inhibitions to approach Michelle in hopes of gaining a date for the coming weekend. Receiving an open door by Michelle herself, he smiled, introduced himself and asked her to dinner. With a smile, “It’s about time you asked me out,” she replied, “you should have asked me months ago. Yes, I would love to.”

With his heart beating in his ears, they exchanged phone numbers, a brief hug, and he returned home to go to bed early and dream about the coming weekend. “After all of that research, I need to make the most of the few years that I have because who knows how long it will last,” he said to himself.