The Potential of a Day

Chapter 15: To Give Life a Meaning

To Give Life a Meaning

          Upon leaving the beach on horseback, I don’t believe neither I nor Leo considered how we were to get back there. So, with no other options, we resort to the original method of transportation; that of the strength of you own legs. Walking. It’s isn’t so bad really, the cool air, come with the evening sky, is refreshing on my skin, and there is still a ghost of the feeling of the wind in my hair as we rode.

          For a long while, I am comfortable with the silence that has fallen between Leo and I, but eventually, I become aware of a tension, radiating off the both of us. I find myself opening my mouth, closing it, and doing the whole thing over again; my lungs begging to press words from my throat, though my mind can’t agree with them on a topic to breathe of.

          In the end, my voice and mind don’t come to an agreement of any sort. I decide I want to know him, this boy who wanders ahead next to me. But I also realize that I don’t have much time for that; my life is over. My brain does not formulate a question; but suddenly, I find myself speaking. Muddled words really; I think all along, I knew what I wanted to say, I simply didn’t know how to bring it up. In the end, I don’t do it elegantly. Not in the least.

          “So I was thinking…uh…wondering. Um...so, your dad; he uh…so…uh…you said that he…so what is it, exactly that he…does?”

          “From what you just said, I can’t really grasp whether you’re asking what my father is employed as, or about what he does in his time off, or about what he does to me. From your discomfort with it though, I suspect it’s the latter,” I swear he’s speaking with more eloquence than before; probably just to make my fumbled introduction appear even more garbled in comparison. If that was in fact his goal, he succeeded, marvellously.

          “Good job getting that much. I wasn’t even really sure what I was saying there,” I try to laugh it off; but I feel myself going pink; both embarrassed at myself, and at the fact that I actually had the gall to bring something like that up without his consent.

          “You know it’s alright. I mean we’ve been randomly hanging out this whole evening; we’re acting like best friends, heck we’re acting like a couple. So in the spirit of the charade, you can ask me the things you’d feel comfortable asking someone who is all that to you.”

          “Okay, then tell me; what does your father do to you?” I pause, “sorry, I don’t know what to ask, I just…I want to know you, Leo.”

          Leo smiles at the ground as we walk; but his smile isn’t one of elation or laughter, but a very sad expression, one of remorse. “You know, Lily, knowing someone’s pain, isn’t synonymous for knowing a person. Pain is an element, an element in every person; regrets, losses, guilt; it’s there, in everyone, even if it’s very small. Pain is in everything; but it is not you.”

          “Alright, if you don’t think that telling me your back story is gonna help me come to know you, then answer me this, Leo; who are you?”

          This time, his smile is for real, “I cannot tell you who I am, because a soul is not something that can be described, not in a thousand words. But I can tell you this: I am a boy who loved his mother very much, and feared his father, still fears his father. I am a boy who loves to read, but likes television even more than I love novels. I love a happy ending, but only if it’s hard-fought, otherwise it’s total bull-crap. My best friend is my cousin, and my aunt and uncle are good people. But look at me; telling you about the things around me; my family, my pass-times. That isn’t me. No, who I am, is just a kid who, despite adversities, chooses to live, chooses to look forward to the day when I can answer your very question, Lily.”

          “But why? Why does it matter who you are,” I murmur, looking at the ground. I am going to pass on very soon; and I’m realizing I don’t know the first thing about who I am. But why does that matter? Why does who I am mean anything, why should it?

          “Because we’re born to die, Lily Simcoe. There’s no escaping it; from the day we’re born we start on a downward decent to our deaths. And in the end, what we accomplish or don’t accomplish, doesn’t mean a whole lot. People are all running around, like chickens with their heads cut off, asking: why? Why was I put here? What is the grand purpose to my existence? I’ll give you an answer,” Leo cocks his head towards the sky, and yells, “there isn’t one!” He looks back at me, “Lily Simcoe, there is absolutely no reason why you or I were born. So, in this meaningless life, I’ve found what the purpose is; to figure out what meaning you’re gonna give it. And the only way to do that, is to figure out who you are and what’s important to you. It’s cruel really, spending all this time figuring out who that is there inside of you, only to lose it all in the end. But cruel or not, that’s the point of all this. Just to figure out who you are. And the best way, no, the only way, I know to do that, is just to live.”

          “And if you don’t?” I question, looking at him out of the corner of my eye.

          “If you don’t what?”

          “Get the chance to figure it out; if you never even try?”

          “Then it’s a waste.”

          “Then call me a waste of space.”

          “Okay, so if you’re telling me you aren’t going to take the time to get to know yourself, it’s your turn to try to answer the question; who are you?”

          My lips fall open, I try to speak, but find once again that I can’t. Leo urges me on; I swallow. “I’m…my name is Lily Simcoe. My sister Sephie died two years ago, and since then, I have decided that I don’t want a meaning to life; I just want to end. I choose to die, Leo Haines, and there is nothing you can say that will convince me that is wrong.”

          Leo gives me the oddest glance that gives me the strangest feeling he either wants to cry, hug me, or throttle me. Or perhaps all three. To put it a more simple manner; he looks disappointed, if in me or in himself, I am not entirely certain. “You’re right,” he tells me, “I can’t convince you of anything. You have to do that for yourself. But I’m going to give you one piece of advice. If you think life has no meaning, and you want nothing more than for it to end, I think you’ve already found yourself a meaning.”

          “Oh? And what’s that?”

          “To prove yourself wrong.”

          “Leo,” I smile, the same, sad, sad smile that the boy next to me was smiling earlier, “I’ve told you already; it’s too late for me.”

          “You keep saying that,” Leo sighs, “but it’s never too late. It is absolutely never too late to decide you want to live.”

          “No, really, for me it’s…it’s too late.”

          “How? How are you any different than anybody else?”

          “Because it is really, honestly too late for me,” I repeat, not sure how to explain it any other way.

          Leo stops walking, turns to me, and yells, “what does that mean?!”

          “I mean, I think I’m already dead.”