Becoming
In conversation with: The entity
“In about 27 years, you will write this conversation. You had this idea but you didn’t act on it because you’re afraid of something not turning out the way you think it should. A writer’s dilemma, I’d say, but you’re not exactly a writer. You’re the ghost of who you want to be and you’ve convinced yourself that you’re not him; you’ll never be him.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“Don’t say that word!”
“Which word?”
“The ‘f’ one.”
“Fuck?”
“DON’T SAY IT!”
“What does it mean?”
“It’s not nice.”
“Wait, what is this noise coming out of my mouth?”
“It’s English. Phonetics and lexicons became the foundation for how others like you communicate.”
“How do I understand what you’re saying? And how do I know how to respond? What’s going on?”
“You’re suspended beyond the dimensions that will eventually control you. You’ve not been born yet. You don’t exist yet.”
“What?”
“You’ll figure it out.”
“And what do you mean ‘others like you’?”
“You’re not the only one. There are others like you.”
“What am I?”
“You’re a human.”
“What is a human?”
“You’ll find out.”
“And you’re not?”
“No, I’m god.”
“What the fuck is a ‘god’?”
“If you say that word one more time, I’m leaving.”
“Sorry.”
The entity stares unwillingly.
“What is a ‘god’?”
“I am meaning. I give meaning. The creator, the annihilator, the lover, the carer, omniscient, timeless, unbecoming, incomprehensible, inconceivable, immaculate, tainted, absolver, infallible, incorrigible, intangible, observer, imposter, ethereal, equable, undying, and yet, inexplicable.”
“I don’t know what half of those words mean.”
“Yeah you do, you looked a lot of them up in the dictionary right now.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I mean, you will, in about 27 years.”
”What is 27 years?”
“Years is a metric you humans came up with to somehow account for time.”
“What is time?”
“It’s the irreversible passage of experiences, moment after moment. What’s happening now is an unperturbed experience of the present moment that seamlessly moves on to the next moment. And it keeps moving on, cause and effect, creation and dissolution; the dictator of existence and impermanence. Nothing escapes it. Only me.”
“What makes you so special?”
“I am it. I am time.”
”You rambled on about a bunch of words a while back and none of them were ‘time’. And now you’re telling me you’re time?”
“I did say timeless.”
“Isn’t that the opposite of time?”
“In this case, time and timeless mean the same thing. Time as a concept is beyond your simple mind. In fact, it’s beyond everyone else who’s like you. Words don’t mean much when we talk about time. But since you can’t comprehend transcendental modes of communication, I have to resort to language that doesn’t remotely explain the intricacies of cosmic prevalence. It’s the only thing I can use to at least slightly convey what things like ‘time’ mean.”
“I think I get it. What you’re saying is that these 27 years are the passage of moments?”
“Yes, in a way.”
“So for you, we’re having this conversation, and I’m writing it 27 years later, at the same time.”
“Well, time doesn’t really exist for me but yes, you can think of it that way. Everything you’ve ever done, every moment to moment transition of your life is happening as we speak. It’s always happening. Everything that has ever happened, everything that will ever happen, everything that could possibly happen—I know all of it, always.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“To you, it doesn’t.”
“What have I been doing for 27 years of time?”
“Not much, to be honest. You won’t even remember the first 5 years to begin with. The people you are born to will be your family. They’ll be your blood—an inescapable bond that you don’t get to decide. Through what people call pictures, you will live your childhood vicariously, in a way, because you won’t remember it happening when it does. Then comes the formative years of your life that you’ll spend growing up in a different culture. About 8 years spent timidly trying to fit into pockets of this culture that you think doesn’t want to accept you. As a result, you’ve become exceedingly introverted, you don’t talk much to anyone, you feel less than everyone, you won’t have many friends either. See, friends are like people you interact with and develop a bond with over time. They’re sort of like family that you can choose.”
“That doesn’t sound too exciting.”
“Yeah, it won’t be. But the good thing is, you won’t remember most of it—just a mosaic of memories that you will partially remember differently, each time you do.”
“That sucks.”
“You think that’s bad? Most of the memories you do remember will be the bad ones. Embarrassing realities edged deeply in your psyche and you can’t run away from it.”
The human sighs.
“The next phase of your life will be fun. You’ll finally make some good friends, go out, be present, be happy. A lot of who you become will stem from these experiences. Unfortunately, your relationship with your family won’t be great for a while. You come from a middle-income household which implies certain responsibilities and your family thinks you’re not working hard enough to be responsible.”
“What is a middle-income household?”
“Oh yeah, you’ll come to know about money.”
“What’s that?”
“You humans have given meaning to a piece of paper, recognized by governing entities as a token for exchange of..things. The more of it you have, the easier life gets. You won’t have a lot of it. It will cripple decision-making, force you to do things you never wanted to do in the first place. The irony is—you won’t even use much for yourself. That’s what being responsible means, in a lot of ways.”
“Why won’t I be responsible?”
“You won’t figure that out for a while but when you do, it’ll come crashing down on you. Don’t worry, it’ll make you a better person.”
“What happens next?”
“You move out of home to get something that humans call a ‘degree’ and spend 4 years in a college doing something you never wanted to. Since you grow up in a different culture, you will suffer from an acute identity crisis—you won’t figure out who you are. For the most part, you won’t feel like you belong anywhere. Deep-seated insecurities stitched into the very fabric of your existence. Somehow you’ve concocted an explanation to satisfy these insecurities and pretend that everyone else cares what you do or think when they don’t. What you don’t realize is that you’re fueling these insecurities all the more, paralyzing your ability to say, do, or think what you actually want to. You think you’re free but freedom is an illusion—an invisible noose around your neck that dictates what you do and how you do it. Even when you become aware of it, you can’t remove it. You’ll feel helpless most of the time.”
“I’m suffocating.”
“Yeah, you’ll feel that way most of the time too. Life isn’t fun, really. Most things will not be in your control. Although you’ll be good at it, you’ll struggle with work. You’ll also struggle with relationships, loneliness, identity, sense of belonging, meaning, decisions, addictions, morality, convictions…”
“Stop!”
“Too much?”
“I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what I’m doing here. And all of a sudden you start pouring all this shit…”
“I’m leaving!”
“Sorry, all this ‘stuff’, in front of me, and I don’t even know how to process it. And I don’t understand why these humans continue existing when the passage of time is so…sad.”
“Yeah, some humans don’t.”
“What?”
“You do always have an option to end your existence.”
“How do you do that?”
“Let’s not get into that.”
“Will I?”
“What, end your existence?”
“Yes?”
“No. Not yet, anyway.”
“Well, why don’t I? And why don’t most humans?”
“Despite what I said, life isn’t all bad. You’ll have good moments. You’ll meet good people. You’ll be brave, courageous at times. And no matter how bad life gets, somehow, you’ll still be a good human.”
“I will?”
“Yeah, for the most part. Not always, but for the most part.”
“Okay.”
“Any more questions?”
“I mean, I already know my life—how things will be, what’ll happen. What’s the point of living it now? And if I do, can I change things?”
“You won’t remember this.”
“I won’t remember what?”
“You won’t remember this conversation.”
“What?”
“You don’t exist, yet.”
“What are you talking about? You said I’ll write about this 27 years from now. How will I write about this if I don’t remember it?”
“This is going to get even more confusing now but I'm just a figment of your consciousness.”
“I have no idea what’s going on.”
“Just unpack things one at a time. Don’t overthink.”
“What is consciousness?”
“Again, it’s one of those things that words can’t articulate. Think of it as the force behind how you’re able to understand and have this conversation with me. The explanation for it, however, will remain incomplete, inconsistent, and paradoxical for all humans, most probably for a very long time. I don’t know. Only the actual me knows.”
“You’re not real?”
“Nothing is, but let’s not get into that either. See, I’m just a voice in your head. I am whatever you want me to be because you’re having this conversation in your head, 27 years from now, and everything I just said was you talking to yourself. Actually, you know what, this is a perfect example of what consciousness is—it’s something that doesn’t just allow you to perceive reality but imagine things beyond physical or logical comprehension. At least, that’s a small gist of it.”
“What’s the actual you?”
“A lot of people will believe that I’m real, outside of consciousness.”
“Are you?”
“You’ll find out.”
“When?”
“Hopefully, when you die.”
“When’s that?”
“I don’t know, I’ve only lived 27 years of your life.”
The human senses a shift in space. The entity starts to fade into the vastness of nothingness. The human slowly immerses, engulfing in the nothingness.
“What happens now?”
“Now, you exist.”