average

You wake up in a white room. Not really a room, exactly, but it is a space. You think. You are there, so it must be, right? In front of you is a couch with a person on it. You hoist yourself up for a better look at this person, but oddly enough, you can’t seem to focus on them. Their form continuously oscillates from person to person, a mix of every human who has ever lived. It all seems oddly familiar.

“Oh, you’re awake,” they say, stretching their arms and leaning forward. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Well hello to you too,” you say sarcastically, slightly taken aback by their rudeness.

“Listen,” they say. “I don’t have time to be nice to you. I don’t care if you think you deserve it or not.” They paused for a moment before continuing, “You’re dead. Don’t ask how it happened, don’t ask where you are — honestly, just don’t ask anything. I’ll explain it. Any questions?”

“I thought you just said not to-” you start, but quickly get interrupted.

“Exactly.” 

You shift your weight from foot to foot; it doesn’t seem like they’re going to stop talking.

“You are in what you will probably think of as a mix between ‘Heaven’ and ‘Hell.’ Neither of those really exist. Maybe this doesn’t either.”

You decide to take matters into your own hands and sit back on the floor. No way in hell—or whatever this place is—were you going to sit on the couch next to whatever this person was. 

“There are two kinds of average,” begins the person again.  “Those who didn’t do anything while they were alive, and those who did so much bad that anything good they ever did — or tried to do — just canceled out the bad. Not like it mattered anyway, but I thought it would console you to know that. Never good, nor bad, just average.”

Average. That word haunts you. Countless nights were spent trying to figure out what was right, how to stand out, how to be good; you simply cannot be average.

“Was I…” your voice trails off, unable to say it aloud.

“Ah yes,” says the person. “The age-old question. ‘Did I do something with my life?’” They smile and close their eyes, as if they’re enjoying playing with my mind. “Why don’t we find out?”

Suddenly, the person disappears, along with the couch. The floor below you, which was never really a ‘floor’ in conventional sense, vanishes and you start to fall. Pain shoots through your body with incredible speed, setting each fiber of your nerves ablaze. You feel the world closing in around you, each breath becoming a struggle. You look down at yourself, mostly because of the pain but also because there’s nothing else to look at. Your clothes are gone, and you’re shrinking! Your hands and feet and arms and legs, all of it begins to become so small and insignificant that you wonder if you’re going to just disappear. 

Then, just as suddenly as it began, everything goes black. You seem to be in some sort of liquid. You hear muffled voices coming from outside of this dark and cozy environment, but they don’t matter to you. It’s not like you know their language anyway. 

Unfortunately for you, it’s all stripped away in an instant. Of course, it feels like an eternity; you don’t exactly have other memories to compare it with. Another blinding white light shines through a gap in your space, and you begin to get pushed outside of it. You start to cry. You cry and you scream, as loudly as you possibly can.

“It’s a boy,” says a voice. Obviously, you don’t understand it, but you certainly feel good when people start cheering around you. Slowly, you stop crying. Your eyes adjust to the room around you, and you relax. You sleep. You have just been born. It’s been a long day. You deserve it. 

The first few years of your life flash by in what feels like the blink of an eye. You go to school, you graduate, you play sports, you have relationships, you end them, you laugh, you cry—the whole shebang. You don’t really spend much time thinking about what you’re doing. Not yet. 

Your twenties are where you actually start to live a little. You have your first real, self aware moment. It is the eve of your college graduation, and you’re laying in your bed, absentmindedly staring out the window. The night sky is filled with stars, not one brighter than the rest, yet all still beautiful nonetheless. 

You wonder where you belong in the sky.

In your thirties, things begin to go downhill a bit. At first, it’s great. You marry your girlfriend, you have kids, you start a whole family and build relationships. Everything is going great. You really are a star. Then your mother dies. You had always known it was going to happen, and yet you never really thought it would. It feels like just a second ago she was here. But she’s not here. She can’t just be Gone, you think. You can’t possibly imagine what would happen if you died. What would happen to all those thoughts you’ve thunk? Those things you’ve done?

In your forties and fifties, you don’t find an answer. You do some soul-searching which doesn’t really work and come out of it even more lost than when you began. You dive into random hobbies, exploring something new every month or two. None of them really stick, and you don’t care enough to keep at it until one does. So most of these years are spent working and providing for your wife and kids. They grow older, and you do too. Your body deteriorates, and you wonder if humans are meant to get this old anyway.

From sixty to eighty is a blur. You retire, moving you and your wife to a cottage by a lake where you can watch your kids’ kids play. You have much more time to do all those things you have always wanted to, but no more energy. You spend your days watching the world and your nights watching the sky.

One summer night, a few months after you turned 83, you’re sitting with your wife by the fireplace. It’s getting late, but you’re almost done with the book you’re reading. Your wife’s weary voice lets you know that she's going to sleep. You lean in and plant a kiss on her forehead, whispering your love into her ear. She repeats the sentiment, and you return to your story. Just a few pages later, and you join her in bed. 

As you close your eyes, you think of the stars. You wonder where you belong in the sky.

Then, you wake up in a white room. In front of you is a couch with a person on it. It all seems oddly familiar.

“Oh, you’re awake,” they say. “Let’s get this over with.”