A Death Pact with Myself
The value of life
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(Note: Contains spoiler of The Universe Versus Alex Woods by Gavin Extence)
It has been 2 weeks from my current state today since I’ve read a book. This book is one I’d call an ‘energy book’, it’s the term I’d call a book I’ve picked up out of sheer ‘luck’, if I truly believe in whatever that word entails, which I don’t, not in full anyway.
You see, I don’t really conform myself to believe in luck, or coincidences or accidents. I believe that our being, all that we are — hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, calcium and phosphorus — terrifyingly, all that you can find in the nearest drug store, is all interconnected; meeting the love of your life, having a kid, stepping on a gum this morning, and me finding that book tucked in a disarranged pile of novels and scholarly materials in a second hand bookstore, these instances, these small movements that lead us to a moment, an interaction, I believe are all bound together by an energy, a frequency, an invisible matter that maybe our species will live to know before the Great Filter.
The way I see it, we are all a part of something big, like the very intricate and prodigious evolution of everything — from micro-organisms to opposable thumbs, from rubbing together two rocks to pushing a button to light the living room, from sending letters using pigeons to electronic mails; yet, we’re all a part of something so small, in the cosmic sense, a planet full of life, seemingly miraculous out of 30 billion planets in our galaxy alone and there are approximately 300 billion galaxies in the observable universe. I guess if I have to use the word ‘luck’, then this would be it — our existence.
Contradictory to what I was taught in a Baptist academy/church, I don’t really believe that we’re the only ones who got lucky. I think it’s egocentric and even unwise to put your money on it, but that’s just me; the faith from people of religion is something I envy, I often wonder how it feels like to stop looking.
A boy, seven years old, if I remember correctly, came across an extraordinary incident with a meteorite; an old man, a veteran of the Vietnam War, alone and ill-tempered. Both met, I believe not by luck, but by the universe’s doing; both found a friend in each other, a company to read Kurt Vonnegut and the Odyssey by Homer.
The plot: a debilitating and terminal sickness, one suicide attempt, a long negotiation, and finally, a death pact.
The boy and the old man made a deal, after of course, a serving of one failed suicide attempt by the war veteran and a series of bickering. The old man didn’t want to die without his pride, undignified, for the sickness that enveloped him was one slow burn, the kind that everyone would know, the kind that has an unwatchable ending, the kind that everyone is dreading.
The pact: When the old veteran couldn’t do even the basic things, when everyone is looking at him with pity, when the words are too heavy for him to spit out, then they’d know — it’s time. The meteorite boy would take his old friend to Switzerland, where euthanasia is legal, I guess the apposite term for it is assisted suicide.
This is the book, the culprit of my reading hiatus. Although I chose the noun ‘agnostic’, the Christian upbringing in me still seeps on the side; the moral questions of death and life.
A simple routine, a surprising find, a diverting book; questions formed in my head, some will only take a few clicks to know the answers, some I believe we’d never really figure out:
Who decided to put us at the top of the pyramid on the hierarchy of life, the one that taught us that our lives can’t be taken, even by our own selves: was it Adam and Eve? A supernatural being? A scientist that claimed that intellect is the basis of the price per life? A philosopher that coined the term morality and said all human beings have souls inside?
Why do we, as a species, claim to be the dominant in the trade? Why aren’t more people questioning this? Why is blood money different for each person — man or woman, president or conman, with or without religion? Is the process of death different for different payments?
How do people in power decide who’s life is more valuable than another? When a person shoots and the other one gets shot, does that automatically make the shooter’s life less valuable? Who gave us the power to decide who we are authorized to kill? Does a crime lessen the value of a life?
Where will we end up in the next hundred years? Death by beheading was acceptable less than 200 years ago, slavery was present and some people who went through it still lives with memories of it. How will the value of life change? Should we be excited for our race or should we be worried that we’d regress?
When will we realize how incredibly small our existence is, and that all of the killings, the judgments, the oils, the segregation are all for nothing? That time will come when the universe will take its reign and all those in the process will restart again?
Their names are Alex Wood and Mr. Peterson, characters written by Gavin Extence from the book ‘The Universe Versus Alex Woods’. The death pact they made echoed questions from curious minds long before their deal was sealed — a good quality of life vs just alive, a wanted suicide vs continuity of a miserable existence; what happens after death: a tunnel to cross with a white light that’s too bright to even begin? Another chance to start again as another human or a horse with a beautiful mane? Or just our atoms floating around in the vastness where they started, infinitely smaller than grains?
Whatever death looks like, I made a pact with myself, that when I meet her, I’d have the audacity to put my arm around her shoulder, like a long time friend, like I’m ready for the end.
