Done Deal

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, life sucks.

First, you’re born into circumstances you can’t control. Fine. How many of us would actually choose to be born anyway, knowing what we already know about the world and the way it works? I wouldn’t, so I guess it makes sense you don’t get a say in whether or not you’re going to be a living, breathing human one day. Being alive is something you have to be forced into, which says a lot about the state of life. No one is happy to be here. If they were, there wouldn’t be wars and violence and depression. Everything would be hunky-dory.

Second, don’t even get me started on humans. Humans are vile and I don’t know why anyone would want to be one. There’s nothing good about being a human. Nothing else on earth has to work to earn its pay, then spend that pay on simply being alive. In a few short miles, a lion can find a meal, find water to drink and bathe in, and find shelter. Those things are free. But a human has to find a job, earn a paycheck, and then waste that paycheck on all the things a lion gets for free. And for what? No wonder humans are so pissed off all the time. Being alive costs money, and since I had no choice in being born, in having this responsibility forced upon me, I’m bitter. I’m out for blood so get the fuck out of my way.

My third point is probably the most important, so pay attention: What is this all for? Spoiler alert: we all die in the end, in case you haven’t figured that out, either. So, really, what’s the point in all this? Why try to afford a life of luxury when you can’t take it with you? Sure, you can have the most elaborate headstone in the graveyard, but even then someone’s going to look at it and wonder why you spent your last few bucks on a grave.

We work ourselves to death — no pun intended — knowing we’re going to die. It isn’t like we wake up the day after our 50th birthday and the Grim Reaper is standing at the foot of our bed and tells us, “Hey, you don’t know this, but you’re going to die in a few years. Sorry.” From the second we’re old enough to conceptualize death, we know it’s going to happen to us. Still, we spend money on medical procedures to delay the inevitable, which in turn prompts stress because trying to stay alive is expensive and we don’t really have the money to do it but we really, really, really don’t want to die, but the point is null because it’s either our stress or cancer or diabetes or driving into a tree that’s going to kill us so why not just fucking die already? Get it over with. Move on. Didn’t being alive suck anyway?

Let me tell you something that might shock you: I haven’t always been this cynical. I used to really enjoy being alive because I was one of the lucky few that was born into a wealthy family that owned a bunch of businesses in Manhattan rather than one of the the unlucky bastards born into a cannibalistic tribe that had to worry about disease and mosquito bites and shit like that.

Things changed one day. Well, I wouldn’t say they necessarily changed — the circumstances in which I lived were forced to change. I had no say in the matter whatsoever, which is also another shitty thing about being alive. No matter what you do, there are certain things that are out of your control. Wow. You’re forced to occupy a walking sack of skin and cells and organs and they can’t even ensure you a safe or happy life. If you ask me, someone should spend the rest of your 80 or so years making up for the fact that you’re alive and a human being rather than a cherry blossom or a goldfish, which has about a two-week life span before it moves on, which is great. Two weeks is plenty time to be alive.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is I was killed in a freak accident. Remember how I said my family was a bunch of Manhattan socialites? Well, had I been born into that cannibalistic tribe, none of this would’ve happened, because as I was making my way down the street one October afternoon, some moving crew jackass somehow managed to drop a piano on me. Sounds ludicrous, right? Honestly, how often does that happen outside of cartoons and bullshit movies? But it happened to me, and just like that, I was dead. Poof! Gone. See ya later, bucko.

I’d taken a philosophy course at Columbia and the professor made us write a paper on what we thought happens after we die. Shit, I don’t know. Your family cries, a funeral director makes a ton of money, the local paper might run an obit if you’re lucky, and after a while things just go back to normal. I wasn’t fussed with bullshit like Heaven and Hell or if I’d be reincarnated as a rock or the gum on the bottom of someone’s shoe. I didn’t care. I’d be too dead to care. Let a flock of seagulls came and shit all over my corpse if that’s what they feel like doing — I don’t give a fuck.

(I got an F on that paper and dropped the course, but shit like that doesn’t really matter once you’re dead, so stop stressing all the goddamn time.)

Anyway, turns out Heaven and Hell are real and I was fucked, which kind of brought about this existential revelation. We don’t spend our lives worrying about the right things. Who cares if you get into Princeton or Yale or if your dad gave your best friend’s mom gonorrhea — start worrying about shit that’s gonna matter once you’re gone, because once you’ve been consumed by earthworms and the issue of the paper that ran your obituary is 15 years old, all anyone is gonna remember you by is what you leave behind. It’s simple: if you’re a bad person, everyone’s gonna be glad you’re dead, but if you’re a good person, people will remember that.

Regardless, I was now faced with a conundrum. I hadn’t been that shitty that God wouldn’t take me, but I had been pretty shitty, so he made me an offer: I could go back down to Earth, be reincarnated or whatever you want to call it, and try again, only this time making an effort to be less shitty. If I got it right the second time I’d be welcomed back with open arms, but only then would I be allowed in. (Heaven’s kind of an exclusive club, you see.) Because of all the reasons I’ve already listed, I didn’t like that offer. I asked if there were any alternatives, to which God snapped his fingers and Satan appeared.

Let me tell you something else: Satan looks nothing like the caricatures we make of him. He looks like a pretty normal guy, so we should probably rethink our artistic abilities, although if Jackson Pollock is famous, I guess pointy ears and a pitchfork aren’t exactly out of the realm of possibility when it comes to Satan.

Satan gave me his spiel next: It’s over. Go with him at that very moment and I’d never have to live another life again. I wouldn’t be punished for all eternity like some of the other unlucky schmucks that went before me because I was still mostly pure (I hadn’t killed anyone and shit like that) but I just would never be able to take it back. Like, six weeks into being in Hell I couldn’t decide it sucked and go hit up God to see if his offer was still standing. I couldn’t pull the same shit Hercules did and walk away from it.

He’s like a used car salesman, that Satan, because the next thing I knew I was in Hell and it was really fucking hot and was eerily reminiscent of my last vacation to Florida.

I guess you’re looking for some kind of epilogue here, probably about how being dead is nothing compared to being alive and you should value your time on Earth while you’re a living, breathing thing on it. Sorry, you’re not going to get it. But I will try to soothe your fears about dying, because it’s not that bad. It doesn’t hurt or anything (even when a piano falls on you) and you do miss your loved ones for a while but you get over it, just like they get over you. Satan’s not that bad, either — a little rough around the edges, but it could always be worse, like having to spend the rest of eternity with Regis Philbin or George W. Bush.

Like I said, life sucks, but if you don’t want to end up like me then it’s all you’ve really got for a while.