10.17.2007 - 2:22 p.m.

I keep meaning to take a camera into the bathroom at work. Not for any of the reasons you might think when somebody says that (sorry, google searchers) but because of the scribbled conversation on the back of one stall door, the first stall as you enter.

At the center of this conversation is a question, in purple, apparently permanent ink: �Why bother at all?� From it, radiating like branches, others have answered:

�Why not?�
�Because there is so much more to life than pain�
�Because your life belongs to more people than just you.�
�Because the water is beautiful today.�
�Because God is there for you, even if it doesn�t feel like it.�
�For the free food.�

Appended to those, in progressively smaller handwriting, are the contradictions, the additions, the disagreements:

�But I�m tired.�
�And somebody loves you.�
�It�ll get better soon.�
�You don�t need God, just enjoy life.� (�How can you be moral without God?� �How can you be moral if you need God to tell you what�s right?�)
and, heartbreakingly, �Pain is everything. There is nothing else.�

Every so often, the custodians try to wash off the conversation. The ink will go, and some of the marker, but always that original question remains, with the smudged or barely-legible remainders of previous attempts to grapple with it. I�ve never added my own thoughts, though I've been tempted on several occasions... but if it ever disappears completely, I already know I'll replace that question.

And I did not make this up, this perfect, living metaphor for how to come at life. Sometimes the world just hands you a pen and asks that you use it.

-stonebridge

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