Return to life - body salvation or soul resuscitation?
Fatigue of the body is nothing compared to the exhaustion of a brain beating in agony. And even in a dream there is no rest - a constant kaleidoscope of pictures, thoughts, questions. And now - just closed his eyes, and away we go … “Why all this? To fall asleep and not wake up … On Sunday, my father's anniversary. I have to change to work during the day and not go … And then I will die at night … Why?.."
The room is dark, although the day has begun long ago. The windows are tightly closed, the blinds are down. But the noise of the street seems to seep through the walls.
Yegor sits on the floor, his head resting on the edge of the sofa, his eyes are closed. From every sound coming from outside, the body shudders as if in pain.
Yegor is very tired. Was on duty at night again. He himself asked to be put on night shifts as often as possible. Yes, and colleagues prefer at such a time to sleep under the side of his wife, and not rush from call to call.
Yegor has no wife. No girlfriend. No pets. Somewhere, however, there is a large family with aunts, grandmothers, brothers-sisters, relatives and cousins. But communication with this noisy clan has long caused physical suffering. As painful as sleepless nights free from work.
New work in this sense is salvation. At night - maximum concentration, not a minute to rest. During the day - a heavy, painful dream, which sometimes catches you like today, on the floor, when you don't even have the strength to undress and crawl into bed. The main thing is not to think! Run away from the painful thoughts and questions that the brain ruthlessly generates every free minute.
"Why all this? To fall asleep and not wake up … On Sunday, my father's anniversary. I have to change to work during the day and not go … And then I will die at night … Why?.."
Fatigue of the body is nothing compared to the exhaustion of a brain beating in agony. And even in a dream there is no rest - a constant kaleidoscope of pictures, thoughts, questions. And now - just closed my eyes, and away we go …
…
Egor is four years old. The parents, who were so worried that the child started talking late, now groan at his endless questions.
“Why does the sun shine? Why do people grow up? Why do dogs bark?"
Usually the kid is interested in the cause of what is happening, asking the question "why?" And this one seeks to understand the purpose and meaning, so each of his questions begins with "why?"
Relatives call Yegor "dangerous". He knocks off corners and stuffs cones, hurrying to catch everywhere, look, touch, figure it out. He opens the radio to understand where the sound is born. “Relocates” aquarium fish into a shoebox in the hope that their legs will grow back. He pulls out a barely hatched carrot in the country to watch how it grows. It cannot be left even for a second. Once a tired dad even tied his leg to the table with tights so that he could be in sight for at least two minutes.
…
Egor is fourteen. Now the parents have other concerns. The guy was changed. Says little. He studies medium. Almost never leaves the room. At first I read everything that was in the house at night. Then I dropped my books and stuck in my computer.
You can't get to school. Sleeps until noon on weekends. Mom secretly carries food to his room so that his father does not get angry. “You spoil the man, mother! He gets hungry, he will come himself! And he just doesn't come. Even pizza or sausages brought by mom often remain not only untouched, not even noticed.
Mom is a doctor and understands perfectly what hormones and puberty are. But the mother's heart contracts in inexplicable anxiety.
Dad is a hockey coach, a man of discipline and order. He is enraged by the amorphous state of his son, the absence of structure, regime, specific goals in his life.
“Why are you languishing in your closet like Koschey ?! The philosopher is found! Get busy! - repeats the father from year to year louder, hoping that the son will finally hear.
Yegor's hearing is all right, but the sounds became his curse. The creak of the springs in the bed, the clink of dishes, the lamentations of the mother, the displeased shouts of the father - every sound, bypassing all obstacles, directly pierces the brain. And there are no barriers. Sometimes it seems that there is not even a body, but there is one bare brain, like a mollusk without a shell, torn apart by billions of jingling needles.
To leave, to close, not to hear … To endure, to survive. It hurts … But it is even more painful to understand that it will not be otherwise. Nobody will understand. People can only understand what is characteristic of themselves. And Yegor's suffering is of a different kind.
…
Egor is twenty-four. He still lives with his parents. But only because he cannot afford a separate corner financially.
School is long gone. Parents are tensely awaiting further action. Mom with quiet sighs, father with caustic comments: “What kind of man are you! Go study, master the profession! And if you don't have enough brains, go to work! Everything as usual.
True, Yegor long ago learned not to hear his father's words. A protective mechanism has been triggered. When the pain is prohibitive, it knocks out the plugs: the brain refuses to respond to it. Egor stopped perceiving painful meanings. And along with this, the natural ability to perceive information by ear also decreased.
Egor tried to live like everyone else. I did not reach the university according to the certificate. I entered the economic college, withstood two months. He escaped from a mechanical engineering college two weeks later. He worked as a loader and a waiter, sorting garbage and delivering mail, but did not stay anywhere for long. Everything seemed silly and meaningless.
Machines can do dumb work too. And intellectual work sooner or later comes down to inventing, developing, implementing these very machines. Rave. Yearning. Automatism. Can't humanity see how it turns into mindless robots. Drinking, walking, multiplying - was this what we were created for? What difference does it make where to live, what to wear, with whom to sleep? What's the point of all this?
At first, Yegor loved the night hours. I waited for the fuss to freeze, the painful sounds subside, when it would be possible to be alone, to be yourself, to let thoughts flow into distant distances in search of answers to countless questions. But the answers were not found, and the questions became more and more. The night has turned to hell. And the excited thought, chained in the grip of the limited human consciousness, now beats like a bird in a cage.
…
Egor is thirty-four. Five years ago, he finally moved out of his parents' house. He worked as a security guard in a nightclub. During the day I slept in the back room and walked with the owner's dog. I noticed that heavy rumbling music clogs up all other sounds, creates a solid background, a kind of sound cushion that fences off from the world. It seems that under these blows not a single thought is held in the head. Zero chance of focus. You just go deaf, falling into a state of some kind of stupidity. By the way, Yegor first tried the "nonsense" there.
Then the club was closed, and he remained on the street. I spent the night with friends or in the park on a bench, I didn't want to go home. I went to the waiters again.
Once while working, I met a former classmate. She and her friends celebrated her birthday at their restaurant. The company was like one mother - slender, strong guys and girls, open, smiling faces, sparkling eyes. The guys were talking animatedly. Either they exploded with a kind, infectious laugh, then they suddenly calmed down, sensitively listening to the story of a comrade, someone brushed aside a tear.
They seemed to emanate some special vibrations. Warmth, fullness of life, purposefulness. Everything that Yegor did not have.
The withdrawn and gloomy Yegor was suddenly drawn to these strangers.
When the guys found out that he was a classmate of the birthday girl, they jumped up, began to shake his hand, pat on the shoulder, hug him like a family, and call him to the table. For the first time in his life, this did not cause rejection in Yegor. Then they waited for him to finish his shift and dragged him along for a walk around the city at night.
The guys turned out to be the rescuers of the Emergencies Ministry. They talked about their work in a fascinating way, shared cases from practice, infecting Yegor with their enthusiasm.
“Old man, come to us! It's so cool! What could be more than saving someone's life? Then its own acquires meaning and purpose. It changes everything!"
It was a blow to the top ten, in the gut, in the most painful. Until that day, Yegor's life seemed empty, everything around was meaningless, giving no answer to the nagging "why am I here?"
And suddenly an idea appeared: to save others. She responded inside and really changed a lot.
Despite the unhealthy lifestyle of recent years, Yegor was in excellent physical shape. He was hardy, easily adapted to new conditions, reacted with lightning speed, could not sleep at night. The drill of his father, who in his childhood dragged him with him to all training sessions, forcing him to give all his best, and the medical books of his mother, which he swallowed in a teenage reading binge, also came in handy.
Six months of intensive preparation, serious stress for the body and mind, the environment of people burning with one goal, cheered Yegor. The depressed wolf tucked her tail for a while. There was no time to howl at the moon, at night it was necessary to study. By dawn, Yegor fell asleep for a short time, and at eight o'clock he was already running to class.
…
Yegor opened his eyes. The room is still dark. But now it's night and outside the window. Yegor slept for at least fourteen hours. The body is numb and aching. But the heartache is stronger. She returned a long time ago, hiding for a short time in a dark gap, giving a break.
For a year now, Yegor graduated with honors from the courses and works in the rescue team, leaving for emergency calls. The list of the lives he saved is growing every day. He was already on the fire, took the child out of the sewer hatch, helped to take the premature birth right at the scene of the car accident.
At first, the work was exciting, distracting from gloomy thoughts. It even seemed like a mission, something big and important, full of meaning. Egor saw pain, fear, despair, hope and … death every day. Most often it was possible to get ahead of her, to win back the victim she liked. It was inspiring. Then the calls became routine, and the questions that worried Egor as a teenager again surfaced.
"Why all this? Why live, save, heal, if you die anyway?"
And then there was day x. Rather, the night. At the scene, they found a guy who had stepped off the roof a few minutes before. In his hand was a piece of paper with the words: "Just don't try to save me!" It was too late to save, but the text of the note was for Yegor like a point-blank shot.
Since that day, a hole has gaped in my chest. Time stopped. It seems to Yegor that it was he who was then left lying on the cold asphalt.
He still goes to work, rushes to calls, rescues people. But that which until recently filled, became automatic, lost its meaning.
After that incident, there was still a drug addict who died from an overdose, who was found next to the switched on computer. Music thundered in the room, the game was long over. Absolutely.
And today a teenage girl swallowed sleeping pills. I'm not scared. It will be over soon. Mom don't cry,”she wrote. Her room was filled with books, many of which Yegor read at the same age. On the table, like frozen thoughts, pills were scattered.
…
Yegor is still sitting on the floor.
He thinks about all these guys.
Feels some kind of connection, involvement, almost kinship …
"They were looking for the same thing as I … And they did not find … Will I find?.."
PS Sound vector it is. The path of a sound engineer is a search, a desire to reveal the meaning of life, to get to the bottom of the root cause of being. Starting with childish questions about the inner essence of everything - from a radio receiver to a big bang, this desire grows with age into an unquenchable thirst that incinerates the brain to the last breath, to the final "why was all this?"
Finding answers neither in adults, nor in books, nor on the Internet, the sound engineer closes in on himself, fences himself off from the surrounding reality, trying to minimize the pain caused by the seeming meaninglessness of existence.
So it happened with Yegor. He is only briefly carried away by the idea of saving human lives. But for the owner of the sound vector, this is not enough. The value of life for him is not expressed in "physical units." After all, the body is only a temporary shelter, a step on the path to eternity, the head of the all-embracing Thought, the essence of which the sound engineer is trying to unravel. And he can do it.
But as long as there are no answers, there is no relief. The world shrinks to the size of a cranium. It seems that in it there is space, salvation, a solution. And then it becomes small. And all this life with its fragile physical shell crushes like a narrow boot that you just want to throw off.
Mental pain, despair, suicidal thoughts are the result of an erroneous solution to the problem "What is the meaning of life?": Until the meaning is found, it seems that it does not exist. And the main desire of the sound engineer, his basic need, is to solve this puzzle, to find the correct answer. And for this he was given all the necessary properties from birth.
Egor is one click away from answers. Do you know the answers?
