Do or Die
By: Jason Michael
Tags: Series, Philosophy, Fiction, Storytelling

Fiction

Do or Die

Photo by Jason Michael

He took his seat in business class on the second to last train rumbling out of Grand Central toward Boston.

The cabin was warm and hushed as he settled into his window seat, while other passengers tucked into the remaining seats around him and directly facing him. It was an unusually crowded train for this time of night.

Not long after they were underway he was fiddling with his laptop while catching glimpses of the sparkling city disappearing into the distance, and patches of early December snow under streetlights.

Suddenly the smell of hot coffee wafting from a passenger’s mug behind him triggered an unexpected, if not unwelcome, download of memories. Unwelcome because after finally getting a few hours free to himself to get his work done, he now couldn’t bring himself to focus.

Trying to snap out of it, he popped his usual three Altoids in his mouth, from the small tin he kept in his inside blazer pocket. It had worked before. Only the usual sting of the mints wasn’t quite enough to jolt him back into a linear mindset.

With a grossly overdue work report idling on his hard drive, despite having no interest whatsoever in working on it, he had even less interest in being prematurely terminated. Admittedly he was caught in the tenuous balance between a junior colleague gunning for his position, and little idea of any actual indispensability he projected to the company at a job he didn’t like.

But even before he could return to the task at hand, the passenger across from him began struggling with Sisyphean effort to find something apparently lodged in the bottom of her satchel. Realizing it seemed he was starting at her, he quickly held out his Altoid tin when she momentarily she glanced up. Completely ignorning his offer, she yanked out the charger for her Blackberry that she had finally located.

Popping a fourth Altoid he again turned his attention back to his work, but not before first grabbing his mp3 player and ear buds from his bag, hitting shuffle and dropping out through the sound.

Maybe it was Kurt Cobain’s voice on Sliver, or the strong mints, but something caught in his throat. He didn’t even know he had this song on his player, or why it was effecting him this way.

The rhythm of the wheels on the train track began blending into a soothing purcussive white noise behind the music.

Mostly tuning out and forgetting what just happened, he still couldn’t quite shake that strange residual feeling…the kind you get when you feel like you lost something important, only you can’t recall what it was. Jumping between his report and supporting documentation, intrusive thoughts kept pulsing through his mind like the station signs above the platforms flying by his window.

The spreadsheets and charts were blurring his eyes. Or maybe it was the tears he was choking back? Certainly wasn’t the mints — he’d finished those off half an hour ago. He closed his laptop, stretched out his legs and took in a deep breath as he looked straight ahead, trying to focus on something — anything else.

The business woman across from him, who had earlier ignored his Altoids, now had an agonized look on her face. She was reading what must have been work emails on her Blackberry, as it had been charging while awkwardly tethered to the outlet near the floor.

He watched her thumbs tapping feverishly away at the tiny smooth keys until she stopped. With her head still down, she shot a look up through an escaping red curl rolling down her forehead, while catching his intrusive gaze. He now realized that earlier stretch knocked her charger out of the outlet, which she had been too absorbed in her work to notice, until her device attempted to shut down in the middle of typing.

As she plugged the charger back in, her eyes unexpectedly met his with a sudden look of surprise; a sense of recognition swept across her face. It was the kind of look that verges on shock of seeing something or someone you were not expecting at that place and/or moment.

After just barely enough time for her Blackberry to power up, her phone rang, jolting them both out of a momentary uncomfortably long silence. After the second ring, the other passengers shushed her, as she quickly grabbed the charger then jumped up to take the call out of the quiet car to answer it in another.

But this is not about the redheaded business woman sitting across from our hero; although there was something uncanny about her that very much reminded him of someone he knew.

This is about how our hero’s journey home was interspersed with pangs of regret over not having made better choices in his life, and bewilderment as to why God, his parents, his teachers, his college roommate, or even the Universe for that matter, had not helped him find a clearer sense of direction early in his career… or maybe even his life. At least one that matched the growing and desperate sense there was something significant missing.

He knew he had to be more than a Douglas Copeland case study for Generation-X.

He never had any illusions that life was perfect, but his life also wasn’t a bad life…at least not on the surface— it was just underneath where there should have been “something” instead what was there, which was more of a place holder keeping the spot warm, but itself like a defined cavity filled with “nothing.”

Maybe because at this moment in time it was 2008, which would turn out was not so 2000-great. Uncertainty was in the very air.

Not that any of the impending economic upheaval immediately impacted our hero: he didn’t own any heavily leveraged real estate that could go into default. Or any real estate for that matter. He certainly wasn’t a shaker and mover impacted by global trends.

But something inside him felt like he should be...

Our hero didn’t have any real position of importance beyond what he daydreamed. He knew a few people who “knew people,” of course, and dropped their names liberally, when convenient. He brushed with greatness on occasion. He also had networks — but didn’t use them as he was saving them for when he really needed them most.

But when would that be, and for what purpose? It wasn’t clear to him.

His job seemed meaningless, and what motivation he could find was barely enough to push back this growing sense of dread and personal inertia.

But there was some truth that was nagging at him; one which he couldn’t escape. While everyone else seemed to have it together, he felt he was just faking it till he made it. But what was he trying to make of himself — was he even on the right path?

And more than just struggling with the traditional “imposter syndrome,” he was too embarrassed to admit that he didn’t feel so much under qualified for his job as he felt over qualified for any job. Which didn’t make any sense to him as he had no legitimate reason to feel that way, having never graduated from an Ivy League School or even ever show any scintilla of academic “promise.”

He was just left with the nagging sense he was missing out on living a purposeful life.

It was at this point in his spiral slide of “what if’s” where he would close his eyes, leave his body, and fantasize where he could have been had he made different choices. It ranged everything from imagining he discovered he had superpowers, to finding a hidden talent of being really good at math. If only there was some reset button where he could go back and try again; figure out something to do that he enjoyed, and brought value to the world, or discover some deeply hidden interest or talent that no one else on the earth possessed.

But he knew that even if he could go back in time, he probably didn’t presently possess enough wisdom to guide his younger self in the right direction, let alone discover a special power.

He doubted he could provide any direction except one that was circular.

If only someone could give him some sort of sign that could point him in the right direction.