A Wager

I'm not a photogenic guy. I hate selfies in particular (it just seems like it would be a form of self-humiliation for me) but if you've made it this far, you probably noticed I don't mind expressing myself in long, rambling, ridiculous paragraphs. I am verbose if nothing else.

So I used that verbosity all throughout my life, and sometimes I had the gall to WRITE IT DOWN. Now, when I look back through my time as a student, I often notice "hey, there are no photos of me". Well, not if I could help it. There are a few blurry, Sasquatch-esque pictures of some kid with Michael Jackson hair and Walter White glasses. Whenever I go through memory lane, I am guided not by pictures (because that would be a short trip) but by what I was writing at the time. I can clearly see the different eras of my life rise and fall, trends come and go, the tides of idiocy ebb and flow.

Here's something I wrote as a seventeen-year-old:

A Wager

Have you ever had days where you just think ‘how did I get here?’

I stand on the top of the cliff, looking down at the sharp drop. It’s a long way to the rocks. The ocean’s fierce and the ground is sharp so I’m kind of counting on the fall to kill me. Everything I ever learnt about gravity is springing up in my mind- can I reach my terminal velocity? Teetering on the very edge I tease myself at first. Let’s see how far I can go over the edge… without actually going over the edge. After revving myself up six or seven times I think I’m ready to do it for real. I’m ready to die.

“Having fun?”

At first I think this is a voice inside my head, one of the many chatter-boxes living in my mind. It’s Canadian though. I’m not too sure why my internal monologues, if indeed I have them, come from Canadian mouths. I turn around slowly, cautious that my descent into madness has reached that particular colony. He isn’t handsome nor repulsive but he’s striking. He’s tall with blonde hair, wears this white raincoat even though the weather’s good and has all the arsenal of the philosopher- heavy black glasses, a tall umbrella with a wooden handle and a bowler hat containing a rich vein of existentialism.

“Who are you?” the wind flicks my hair into my mouth as I speak. It’s all really rather dramatic.

“Inspector” the man carefully approaches me. He’s standing less than a metre away from me, his vertigo is next to non-existent, “and how do you call yourself?”

“Inspector? That’s a title, not a name”

“It’s all I’ve got” he says darkly, “shall we go inside?”

“Why?”

“I’d like a cup of coffee” says the Inspector as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world, “I take mine with sugar and cream. What about you?”

“Are you trying to get me away from the cliff?”

“What?” he says either sarcastically dumbfounded or entirely Chaplinesque, “no! Come with me, I’ve got a shack down the bottom of the hill”

“No!” I defy him, “I’m going to do this and I’m going to do this now”

“But why now?  What’s your rush?”

I remain answerless at this. The Inspector sits down beside me and motions for me to do the same.

“Any particular reason you’re up here or are you just sightseeing?”

“I’m just-”

“I know what you were going to do” he wavers, “everyone thinks about it at some point in their life”

“My death? Oh I see…” I catch myself two seconds too late, “are you sure you couldn’t just nip off for five minutes?” I ask meekly.

“I’ll make you a deal- if I can’t convince you not to jump, I’ll jump with you”

Thus a wager has started. We are betting our lives. All in.

“So why?”

“Why what?”

“Don’t” he shakes his head like the Ghost of Euthanasia Past, “just don’t. Don’t pretend that you haven’t scripted your response”

“Oh, OK. Ah, peak of my happiness”

“Explain?”

“Really?”

“It’s not for my benefit”

“Alright…” I look into his soulless blue eyes, “I figure that the going’s not going to get any better so I might as well bow out now while life’s still good”

“Don’t believe in God?”

“Did, for a while… then just sort of… forgot about him”

“The God that governs best is the God that governs least. That being said, the invisible and the non-existent look very much alike. Without a God, there’s no reason for you to fear death. There’s no consequence for you… what about your friends and family? Thought about them?”

“That’s a good reason for me to keep living?”

“No but I thought I might play that card. Alright, if you don’t think death is so scary, what’s wrong with life? If it’s a choice between living and nothing, you might as well choose living”

“Life is wasted on the living”

“Got that out of a movie?” the Inspector laughs maniacally, “no it’s fine. I get it. If I were you, I’d jump”

“What?” I was startled by this sudden u-turn of tactics.

“No, I’d… I’d jump. No one will remember you, no one will even notice and over the years when you’re dead and buried, the world will keep revolving with many people to replace you. Do not envy the dead. Envy the happy”

“I was happy jumping a moment ago, why can’t you just let me be happy doing this?”

“You can’t be happy” the Inspector grins, “not anymore. Not now that you know that being dead and being happy are not one in the same”

“Good game” I shake his hand, “we should do this again sometime” and the two of us laugh like old comrades. What he has said has made sense, not nearly strong enough to be an epiphany but perhaps a revelation. It is better to try and fail than to not attempt.

“Would you care to come in for coffee?” the Inspector offers again.

“What would happen then?”

“We would... move on”

Somehow coffee seems something more. I circle the cliff to look at what was, a moment ago, an exciting prospect. I turn around again to thank the good Inspector.

But he is not there.