Or the Egg

“Which came first...”

It's a trick question.

The problem is – I'll tell you what the problem is – we see the world as being linear. First a cause then an effect. That's how things work, right? For instance, let's say someone punches me in the face. And then my nose breaks. You assume that my nose is broken because of the fist merging with cartilage. But you never stop to consider that maybe, just maybe, I got punched in the face because my nose was broken.

And that's why you can't answer the question. The one about the chicken and the egg, I mean. You're caught. You're caught in a web so big you can't even begin to fathom it.

That's rude of me. I'm making assumptions.

I should clarify. I'm not crazy. You think I am. You think “what's with this guy, this guy talking about chickens and eggs and webs. He's nuts. He's bonkers, he's lost his marbles, he's off his rocker,” or any other colloquialism of your choice. But I am not. Crazy. You'll just have to take my word for it.

It's just that I've had too much time. Most people, they have something else. They have friends or families or jobs or television. They have distractions. I just have the time. And time as an empty vessel is a dangerous thing.

At first, you have the usual thoughts. Dreams of life with everything you ever wanted, dreams of escaping to someplace better, fantasies of the perfect girl, of success and respect. But somewhere after the first year, they fade like water trickling down a drain. And that's when you start seeing them. The splinters in the foundation.

I'm not arrogant. I know how this sounds. It sounds like I think I have the answers. And I do. But it's only because of the things I've seen and the deeds I've done. I am just very lucky. I get to know the answers. It's quite the privilege.

But back to the chicken and the egg. The reason you can't answer it. It's because at one point there has to be an effect without a cause. Just a chicken wandering around without an explanation. Or just an egg laying there without a mother. Hence the splinters.

The correct answer is “neither” by the way. “Both” is also acceptable, but I prefer neither. It has a nihilistic poetry to it.

You see, the chicken and the egg. They both exist. Because they have to. You can't have one without the other. Neither one comes first, they both just are. If you unhinge yourself from the linear, it all becomes so obvious.

I'm not being clear. It's hard, to show you I mean. I wish I could just put you in my shoes. Then maybe you'd understand. But then, you'd only understand too late. You'd still have to deal with the years of guilt and the morality gnawing, like termites hollowing you out. Piece by piece.

I remember back when I first heard them. The gargled screams. I thought I was doing something wrong. I mean, I was just doing my job. I had to pour the water over the bag, and there was no room for questions. That's what I told myself. I didn't like to think of the face beneath the bag. That wasn't my job.

Did you ever do one of those paint by numbers as a child? The ones where if you colored all the 1's yellow and all the 2's blue and all the 3's green, you wound up with some larger picture? And if you made a mistake, and colored a 1 purple by accident, then the picture wouldn't make mistake? That's how life works.

The picture, it's already there. We're just filling in our number. We do the things we do, not because it's our choice, but because if we didn't then the picture wouldn't make sense.

This sounds fatalistic. But it's not. It's just logical. Don't you understand? The only way there can be a chicken or an egg is if both of them exist no matter what. It's both already born and already hatched. Everything is as it should be.

Even if it's horrible.

Maybe it would've been better if I got to ask the questions. Then maybe the noises wouldn't bother me as much. Then maybe I'd understand that what I did had a purpose. That it was vital to my country's safety or that it saved innocent lives or whatever talking point was in vogue. But instead all I had was the water, and the bag and the screams.

I understand now. That I poured the water because they had to scream. I was just filling in my numbers. But at the time, I wasn't clear. I thought I was doing something wrong, something terribly wrong.

My lack of clarity made me behave erratically. At first it was little things. I didn't sleep. Instead I'd just sit on the side of my bed, whispering the alphabet backwards. I was six or seven when my mother told me that would help. With the sleeping I mean. But I wasn't six or seven anymore, and now it just gave my mouth something to do in the witching hours. I didn't eat. I knew I was dissolving, but I couldn't bring myself to care.

Then I threw my soup back in the servers face. He had third degree burns. That's what they told me. They asked me why. And I didn't know. It broke me, this mystery. Why did I throw the soup? Back then I didn't know it was the same reason I tortured, that it was pre-ordained, that it the face was burned before the scalding liquid hit. And I lost myself looking for answers.

That's when I went into what doctors would call “acute stress disorder” or “a state of shock”. But that was a misnomer. It was more a “state of mistrust”. I didn't trust my limbs to move the right ways, or my lips to say the right things. I couldn't, not after I burned the poor bastard. Not without knowing why.

It only lasted for a couple years. 641 days to be precise. 641 days of living off needles and syringes, and bags. Bags of food, bags of waste, sometimes I wondered if they ever got the two mixed up. That would've been funny. Not to me. But to the unbiased observer, I think it would've been hilarious.

Then I finally understood. I had divorced myself from distraction. And I realized that there was never a why. That it was just an illusion. That we were standing on splintered ground, and the best that we could do was to fill in our section of the picture.

And that's why I can understand. That there it doesn't matter which came first. Because the chicken and the egg were already there.

I'm not crazy.

We do what we're meant to, because we have to. Because if we didn't everything would fall apart. Because that is how the picture was drawn. Because then there couldn't be a chicken or an egg.

I'm not crazy. I'm just right.

Please. Please God. Let me be right.

“The chicken or the egg?”