Step by Step Into Hell

you are a bad boy

Not me, sleeping when I should make money

Over the past few months, my friends and I have taught ourselves to rise up early. Or, to put it a little more accurately, we have tried teaching ourselves, to rise before the sun dawns, and hopefully, get to have an hour or so to ourselves before the day sucks us in, and gets our blood pressures elevated. Moreover, there seems to be something especially gladdening, even freeing, about getting to start your day as early as half past four. It’s one of those things that’s always difficult to do, but afterwards, you are so glad you did.

It’s also being said that in order to live healthily, we should sleep early, and wake up early. But enough sleep works well on paper, not quite so in practice. Especially not when you intend to get ahead, and make a name for yourself. Training to be a doctor has come to clearly mean, and we have assented to the reality without resisting, that for the sake of another person’s health, you stake your own. Either one or the other, and none of both, lest we end up like the proverbial hyena who unsure of where exactly the aroma was coming from, tried walking two roads simultaneously, and burst his bowels. Yet quite contrary to what you may think, our choice is an easier one to make, than the hyena’s might have been.

However, it’s almost impossible to be in your best game every single morning. There are days, and they are not few, when keeping your eyes open feels like torture. I suspect, having watched myself and my roommate for a while, that I have learnt an important lesson which I will presently share with you. Distance allows us see some people as saints. When, however, you get closer, or better yet, share a roof with these same people, you see so much of their human side to ever think much of them again. Is it the same thing in marriage? You put a ring on an angel’s finger, a few years in you would give up anything to chop off that hand. Maybe if that will keep them from bungling everything up. It also could be that we ourselves are thorns in our spouse’s, or roommate’s, flesh, and they have prayed so much that God would take it away, but like to Paul, he only seems to say: My grace is sufficient. My strength is made perfect in your weakness.

I have watched my roommate, and surely he has watched me as well. I have watched him, several times, fight the battle during those difficult and chilly mornings, and seen him lose. And then once, I stumbled upon my lesson, and I have since been thinking of the matter, and hoping to write on it.

There’s something embarrassing about getting up early, only to have to go back under the blankets, after you had neatly made your bed, and nicely folded the duvet. Maybe your roommate, in fact does not mind you, and even probably wishes you do, because that way you also give him the wherewithal to go back to bed as well. He looks sober, but what if he’s also fighting with all his might? What if he also lost the battle long ago and whatever he’s doing now is just for show? Your pride, however, doesn’t allow you to be so impetuous. At least you have some dignity, and you will preserve it, as much as your roommate might actually be thinking nothing more of you than that you are a nagging, useless brat with an inflated sense of self-importance who loves bragging once in a while in that particularly annoying way. So you close your eyes for a some minutes and lean your head on your arm. After a while that becomes uncomfortable. What about you lie yourself casually on the bed for some ten minutes? You do. Very quickly and with rarefied agility so that you don’t give your mind time to dwell on the shame.

A quarter of an hour later, you stir. It’s so chilly, what about I curl myself up a bit for some warmth? A few moments later: Okay, that’s still a little uncomfortable, what will it cost me to cover myself? Oh. Before I do, I should probably set an alarm. 45 minutes. I will have just enough time to get ready for my ward round. After five minutes the alarm blares. It couldn’t be so soon. Snooze. Another blare one minute later. You know what? Let’s just put off the alarm. At half past eight, when you finally get out of bed, you know you have thrown away a part of your day you will never have again. “That should not happen again,” you say. Until it does.

We are not bad people. We are pretty decent. And morally upright. Evil people are those who commit the flagrant crimes. It’s those who steal government funds meant for developmental projects. It’s those who rig elections and get themselves into power unlawfully. It’s those who arrogantly call off humanitarian aid to the sick and poor. As far as injustice and evil goes, we can only be acquitted for our little wrongs that costs no one his life.

We just won’t wake up one day and strangle a woman to death. But we will see another man do and look away. We won’t get to the office one morning and commit a fraud that would earn as a million dollars. But we will set aside some five dollars as self-payment for the daily inconveniences our employer dismisses or thinks little of. Of course he won’t notice it. We do not allow ourselves huge compromises, our conscience is still tender and we won’t be able to bear the existential angst that might plague our minds afterwards. Soon we do, however, as over the course of little compromises, we teach ourselves to cheat and shut up our conscience. At first, one big error we will not allow, a smaller one maybe we will consider. Then? A much bigger one, but not so big. And then, as James Russell says of Shakespeare’s Macbeth: one sin involves another, and forever another, by a fatal parthenogenesis […]

The truth could be that I don’t want to go back to bed, nor does my roommate. Or do we? But we can take those steps that will make that outcome inevitable. You are not a bad person. And you wouldn’t do the bad things everyone else does. But you’ll do better if you don’t trust yourself so much. With all those a hundred little sins big bro, you are preparing yourself, and very aptly enough, to commit a ‘mega’ one. You are not a bad person, at least not yet.

“…if you let people kiss your hand, then they’ll want your elbow, then your shoulder, and then…”

(Charlotta’s words) Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard

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Stay lit.

Stay awake.