This summer, we asked participants to submit work for the second year in a row as part of our Invite To Write Challenge. Throughout the fall we will share some of these pieces from our prompt, “Another World, Another Time.”
First up is “Rounding Error” by Sean Davis.
Rounding Error
Ever since I got back from the war I’ve had the sneaking suspicion that I’m not really here. I’ll smell some diesel fuel from an obnoxiously large truck, I’ll see a flash of light, or I’ll feel some quick pain in my side, and I start to believe that I’m sprawled out on my back in the middle of a badly paved road with the sun glaring down at me. I think to myself that maybe I’m still in Iraq, right after they blew me up in that ambush in Taji. I think maybe I’m dying slowly and my whole life up to this point has been one big delusion, a trick my brain is playing to keep me distracted from my imminent death.
I still think that sometimes today, twenty years later.
This happens to me when something in my life is going in a positive direction. I know about survivor’s guilt, PTSD, TBI, and all sorts of other depressing acronyms. I even know that feeling like I’m slowly bleeding out in a firefight that occurred almost a generation ago is not rational, but it happens because I don’t think I deserve good things.
Honestly, I have a great life now. I’ve been married to my wife Kelly for sixteen years, and I live on the Oregon Coast where I get to raise my fourteen-year-old daughter. I have two big dogs and a big beautiful house, a house that if I had seen it as a kid I’d never believe it possible that I would ever live in something this nice let alone be able to buy it. And sometimes when I get sad, because that does still happen a lot, I might tell a friend that I shouldn’t be this happy.
They always say, “Of course you do. You deserve it. All the shit you went through. You deserve it, all right.”
But I don’t believe I deserve it. I don’t believe anyone deserves anything. If I did, then that belief would light a very long fuse, and that fuse would burn all the way back to those Kurdish kids we saw. What the hell did they do to deserve what happened to them? Or Mustafa? Mustafa was just twelve and his parents were killed, so he ran a small shop all by himself behind an Iraqi Police station. I’d go into his shop sometime during every patrol and got to see him almost every single day for months. I even bought him a coffee pot and coffee beans from the PX because Iraqis only drank tea, and I wanted coffee when I stopped by. He was a good kid.
He was killed when the police station was attacked.
I could still see the faces of all the children, especially my favorites: Nasim, Akhil, Omar and the kid we called “Oh My Shit.” We called him that because he would always say it, “Oh my shit. George Bush, number one!” or “Oh my shit, Davis, there are no bad guys around here,” or “Oh my shit, Davis, Jay Z is the best.” We treated the kids the best we could, gave them money, gave them food, gave them water. They liked us. They liked us so much that they joined the Iraqi Army because they wanted to be soldiers like us. They were no older than my son and daughter were when they sent me to Iraq, but these battle orphans didn’t have birth certificates, so they could say they were old enough to enlist and no one could prove different. Plus, Iraq needed soldiers badly.
They were killed. All of them. And the fuse burns to this big bomb in my head: why did they deserve that? The only answer I can come up with after thinking about it for years is that no one deserves anything. I know that some people might believe this means we live in a chaotic universe without rules, and living in a universe that isn’t governed by some notion of justice by an undefinable higher power is terrifying, but this isn’t true. My truth is that the overwhelming majority of existence makes no sense, and human beings have been getting by just fine. Well, when we’re not making up reasons to kill each other.
We love to believe we can figure all this shit out, but we can’t. Not really. Mankind has invented mathematics, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus, but if you really think about it, we can’t even count to one. Try it. Start at 0.1 and tell me when you get to one. Look at the sun. According to our brightest minds the sun weighs 2.192×1027 tons and the surface temperature is 9,920 degrees fahrenheit, but it floats weightless in a void that averages -455 degrees fahrenheit. Giant balls of fire and gas that weigh more than the human mind can understand zip around in icy nothingness. How the hell do you explain that?
And who the hell are we to think we need to figure it out? We’re not the rule; we are the exception. The universe is 99.99% nothingness. Even we, the little bits of stardust that became sentient meat, are mostly made up of nothing. Every atom in our body is 99.99% empty. All that we are, and all the matter in the universe, is just a rounding error.
So being next to nothing and not believing I deserve anything may sound sad and scary, but it’s the opposite. If I believed that everything happened for a reason and there was some sort of just higher power looking out for me, that would mean that those children deserved to die horribly. If I deserved all that I have right now, doesn’t that justify the war? Doesn’t that justify all wars?
Look, here’s the thing, we get to borrow 7*1027 atoms, give or take, for a limited amount of time, a hundred years max, and then we have to give them back. The First Law of Thermodynamics says that matter in a closed system can’t be created or destroyed, so all the things that make us us, the star dust, chemicals, and electricity, is on one long journey that only includes us for a miniscule amount of time on this cosmic scale. So, we need to ask ourselves, what are we going to do with that small amount of time you can control?
I’d say, why not help each other out? Life is hard. Be nice to each other.
The real and difficult fact to accept is that the whole human race won’t be around too much longer. Not compared to a galaxy, a star, or even a planet, and in the grand scheme of things, we really aren’t that big of a deal.
Celebrate every day if you can. I don’t mean to say live every day like it’s your last. That’s just a dumb thing to say. Rent will always be due next month, but go out of your way to find, honor, and celebrate small victories. Don’t let the losses drag you down. Don’t worry about saving the world. Just worry about being a good person. Get to know your neighbors’ names, start a trivia team, join a board, write a poem, and share it, even a bad one.
That said, many people get through their trauma or addiction issues by finding god. I’m happy for them. I wish them the best. I won’t argue with you, and if you bring it up I’ll just smile, nod, and find a polite reason to excuse myself. Who am I to tell you what to believe when I can’t even prove that any of this is real.
