“What is life?”

Not the value of a single life, not the lifecycle of a human, but life itself, the concept of life.

What is it?

If you asked anyone this question, the answer would vary from person to person, based on their beliefs, how ambitious they are, and their attachment to it.

To me, life is nothing special… I’m glad to have come to existence, I have family, friends, hobbies, interests, and many other things I’m thankful for.

Yet, I’m aware of how fragile life is, it’ll inevitably fade away, that’s why I’m not exceptionally attached to it. Wouldn’t it be rude if I did get attached to it? After all, I did not ask to be born -to be given life- yet, it was given to me.

I had no input in the matter, but I am nonetheless grateful that I get to experience the life I wouldn’t have been able to if it wasn’t for being born, even if I wasn’t asked about how I feel about it.

If I missed the void of nonexistence so much, then all I need to do is wait, and eventually I’ll be back before I know it.

It’s not mine, I did not create it, it was given to me.

In a sense, I’m merely borrowing it.

I will take care of it, but I know that the day where it’ll be snatched back from me will inevitably come. It would be rude to get attached to what is not one’s belongings.

I’m aware that I might -and inevitably will- die.

But, that’s just what life is to me.

It’s just a perspective… an opinion of sorts.

But those are subjective.

Each person will have their own.

But, objectively speaking, what is life?

No one can answer that question.

At least, no one should be able to.

A question like that isn’t something a human would be able to answer.

At least no ordinary human can.

But, I have come to know.

When asked what a dog is, people immediately picture a dog. They describe what they have come to know as a dog. Man’s best friend. Tiny paws. Cute eyes. It’s the same for other animals, food, people, and almost anything else.

Only is it when the subject at hand philosophical or immaterial do humans stop visualizing.

Humans have advanced and evolved, yet their imagination remains shackled by the same chain since their genesis.

Humans can not visualize what they have not seen.

Words, on their own, lack meaning.

Meaning is bestowed unto the words by the humans, the humans who require words to refer to what they have seen.

Thus, if it was never observed, it won’t have the need to be referred to.

If it won’t be referred to, it wouldn’t be associated with words.

If no word could describe it, humans can’t visualize it.

If they are unable to visualize it, do they really understand it…?

Do they really understand the essence of life? Or do they just… live?

One might argue, that the beauty of life is, that you don’t need to fully understand it to appreciate it.

But perhaps the only reason we appreciate it, is that we don’t understand it. Could our appreciation of life waver were we to grasp its meaning?

I think that is a futile question. We will never fully grasp what life is.

Our brains have undergone programming throughout millennia; we can never accept anything we don’t understand. We can never understand something we deny.

When faced with the undeniable truth -life itself- our brains wouldn’t let us gaze at it, the human brain is intelligent enough to know that it’s more than it could ever handle.

That doesn’t necessarily mean it would blind us, but when faced with the unimaginable, our imagination enforces its own interpretation of life unto it, as a defence mechanism.

It twists whatever cannot be understood into something more convenient, something the brain could handle.

The downside is, in the process of making what we can not understand, relatively understandable, things get lost.

Afterall, I have seen what I believe is life, yet I feel like I understand life less than the average ignorant person.

At least that is what I believe.

Perhaps all of this is also what my brain has fabricated to make sense of what I have seen.

My name is Scott Wilkins.

It was the first day of the new college semester.

I woke up, took a shower, made and ate a simple breakfast, changed into my school uniform, and went out. The usual.

No one was there to see me off, as I have been living on my own for the past two years.

On my way to college, I passed by my friend’s house to walk together. We have been walking together ever since I moved here and became friends with him, so, almost 2 years at this point…?

It has also become a habit of mine to leave him behind when he’s late, which is every other day.

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Coincidentally, today was one of those days.

Realizing I’ll be walking in silence, without the noise pollution that is his drivel, I pulled out my headphones from my backpack and started playing music to fill out the silence.

Of course it wasn’t silent, it was the morning of the first day of the semester, if anything, it was too noisy.

But that’s just how humans are, if it doesn’t concern them, it’s unconsciously blocked out and considered background noise.

Everyone is busy with their lives, nobody cares about what anybody else is doing, this is the harsh truth everybody learns eventually, that they are not the protagonist of the story told by the world. We are all side characters.

The main characters of this world have long since died, they explored the lands and the seas, they waged wars and led nations, they spread religions and made life changing discoveries. They changed lives.

Yes, nobody is special anymore. Nobody can be special. The train going to that destination has long since departed, and reached its stop, with no plans for return trips.

A train huh? I guess it really is like a train, after all, I bet many people were on the tracks of becoming great historic figures, only to be forgotten because they got distracted by other things and got off the train at the wrong station.

I sighed as I reached a crossing.

As if the world was ironically nodding in agreement, the traffic light immediately turned red, telling me it’s too late to cross.

I would have to wait for the next cycle. Would it have been too late by then? Of course not, I always leave early for college so I can arrive with time to spare. But I did not choose the time I was born at, I could not leave early for life and it’s making me anxious.

I was waiting alone, but only for a few seconds.

Within seconds people started joining me in the wait for the traffic light to change to red.

A man in an expensive looking suit and sunglasses who was talking on the phone. A business man?

A middle aged woman holding the hands of two lively kids wearing backpacks, most likely on their way to their elementary school.

Three young girls in a school uniform that belongs to the nearby middle school talking and laughing. Ahhh, I would recognize that uniform anywhere, it was my middle school as well after, all… To be young again.

A person with headphones, who looked about my age wearing casual clothes and a backpack. He was happily tapping his feet and slightly bopping his head to whatever music was playing in his headphones.

I recognized some of them. I see them often, since we all seem to get here at the same time on most days.

That was all of them.

No, in the corner of my eyes I thought I saw one more person.

Not wanting to stand out, I resist my urge to glance behind me, but that was not required.

The person had reached my side by the time I had the thought.

It was a girl, about my age too.

She looked familiar, I did not know her personally but I had a feeling I might have seen her on campus. She had long black hair, and pale white skin, although that wasn’t easy to see from the side as she was looking downwards.

I was standing barely behind the pedestrian line.

I was standing where I was supposed to.

But she wasn’t… She was by my side a moment ago, but she didn’t stop, she kept on walking, eventually reaching the middle of the road, with cars barely avoiding her.

Something was wrong.

I didn’t know whether she was not paying attention or doing so purposefully. My guess was that she was daydreaming as she didn’t show any reaction to being yelled at and to all the chaos surrounding her. It looked surreal, almost like she was sleep walking.

Another person who wasn’t paying attention was the truck driver that’s speeding towards her. I still remember that very moment, I’m amazed by how well I remember it, it feels very detailed.

The driver was talking to someone in the passenger seat and laughing. The irony. He had no way of knowing that what follows would wipe that laugh off his face in a single moment.

I pitied him, really. One second of negligence and his life is ruined.

But even more so, I pitied the girl, her sin was like that of the driver, not paying attention, at least that’s what it seemed like.

Yet I sympathized more with the girl. Perhaps because she was of similar age, or went to the same university, I could relate to her to some level.

Perhaps that’s why my legs started moving on their own.

Was that really enough of a reason to convince me to risk my life for a stranger?

At that moment I came to the realization that I don’t value my life very much.

I never took myself to be a person who would sacrifice himself for another.

I felt that if I saved a person who would perhaps, value his life more than I did it’d be a net positive.

At that moment I came to the realization that I did value life, just not mine.

I was so fixated on her and the truck, that I lost track of my surroundings.

I managed to slightly push the girl, it was not enough to get her over to safety completely, but it was the most I could do.

The last thing I saw was the girl getting hit by the truck, followed by a loud car horn, that surprisingly, didn’t come from the truck, but from a car I barely saw through the corner of my eye. I went flying, surely hitting the ground on the way back would hurt, but I didn’t have to worry about that, as I started losing consciousness.

‘It is crowded in here’ I thought, as I kept getting pushed around, ‘Just… Where am I?’

I looked around me, there were people everywhere, I could barely see through them. They also looked… weird.

Their silhouettes looked like people, but they lacked everything else that resembles people.

They were pure, bright white. They had no facial features, no eyes, no nose, no mouth…

You could only tell them apart by their outline and their clothes. Their movements also seemed off, almost robotic. Many of them were standing there, but I couldn’t see exactly what each of them was doing because of the crowd. The ones next to me seemed to be holding onto handrails and hanging straps.

‘A train?’

After looking around a bit, I started noticing that not all of them are the same color. Some are very bright. Some have varying shades of grey, ranging from almost indistinguishable from the pure bright white, to the color of concrete. If I squinted hard enough through the crowds, I could also see one… or two completely dark silhouettes.

Those dark silhouettes were the only ones moving in the whole carriage, they were heading towards the door, once they arrived, they waited.

It seemed the train was coming to a stop soon, as it was slowing down.

“H-Hey!!”

All of a sudden I was getting pushed by those next to me and pulled by those behind me. It was so crowded that resisting was futile. If I resisted, I would have lost my balance and fallen down, I did not know what was happening, but I had to go along with it.

Before I knew it I was next to the dark silhouettes in front of the door. I finally had room to breathe and sufficient space to stand straight again.

The door slowly opened and the dark silhouettes got off the train.

To where?

It did not look like a train station, in fact, it did not look like anything.

Everything outside was as white as a cloud. It’s almost as if the whole world -people included- are made of chalk.

I could see certain shapes that had outlines, buildings, lamp posts, even streets…Excluding the black outlines, all were completely white.

“Ah-“

I was once again pushed by the people on the train, only this time, I was pushed off of it.

As soon as I set foot on the pure white ground, I woke up.