Dan was lying down on the bed in his bedroom. There is nothing out of the ordinary about this. But Dan was doing too much of it. The only time Dan had left his room in the last week was to eat in the cheap restaurant opposite his apartment. His room was covered with layers of dust and sprinkled with cobwebs all over the place. His room was utterly disorganized, just like the state of his mind. Dan was almost getting comfortable with his decay. He read something, watched a bit of TV, listened to a few songs and slept the rest of the time. Dan was so confused about what to do, that he did nothing.
His life had come to a standstill. Till the last week, he had a decent paying job. He had an ability to keep the HR managers at bay and thus was pretty much satisfied with the job too. And then all of a sudden, decided he had enough and tendered his resignation. He had to forsake a month's salary for leaving his job without notice but he did not mind. He tried to remember the words he had said to justify his resignation. The words were trickling in."Not job material", "Entrepreneurial", "Pursuit of passion". Now that he looked back, those words were mere excuses to disguise his lack of planning in quitting his job. He quit because he had felt intense suffocation for a matter of two minutes and that resulted in the resignation.
Now, the only thought that was running in his head was the excuse that he was going to give his mum for not finding a new job yet, when she would call worriedly in a few hours expecting some restoration of sense in her son. Searching for an excuse was being too much trouble so he decided that he would tell her the truth instead. The only issue that was really plaguing him was he did not know what he wanted. Everyone else was so certain of what they wanted. Dan hated his utter cluelessness. He had to find a way. "I have to think" Dan thought. His struggle with the lack of understanding over his existence overwhelmed him. He wished he was like the others who did what others told them to do. Dan had a largely uneventful life like the others and that's why he wondered why he could not behave like the others too. Make money, recreate and procreate. And like them, basically try feeling good about yourself and feel important from time to time. It was such a simple and easy way to live, Dan thought. Yet he could not follow that path. Dan knew what he did not want but he did not know what he wanted. He had no idea of it. He did not want to follow the path everyone else did but had no alternate path in his head ready. Danny smiled to himself. Even infants were better functioning than he was. They cried when they wanted milk, play or a cuddle. And here he was, a 26 year old grown up turning into a semi-vegetable with hardly any decision making capacity. The world wasn't such a difficult place to live in as long as you had an ounce of purpose. Take away that ounce and you will have a person like me, Dan reasoned.
"Life is an illusion" he had heard people say to sound intelligent. Right after saying that, the same people dived headlong into the mundanities of life. "Life is an illusion and everybody is a part of it, me included" Dan thought. “The illusion will deceive me too. Just like my fellow participants. The trick is to not try to solve the puzzle because the puzzle is unsolvable. The dice of the universe is always loaded against you.” Dan was half proud half embarrassed with his philosophizing but happy that atleast things were beginning to make a little sense. The point was not to understand or question the point of existence. The point was to go about that existence as it comes. Like watching a movie for the first time. With that thought Dan went back to sleep.
Dan woke up 10 hours later, with his head feeling dazed and foggy. Too much of sleep was giving him an intense hangover which he had never felt with any amount of alcohol. Somehow, he should have felt better than what he was feeling right now. After all, life was beginning to make a little sense right. Or maybe it was not. Maybe it was an illusion after all. He started feeling disillusioned. Disillusioned with the way his life was progressing. This was not how his life was supposed to be. Right before falling asleep he had reasoned that life was like a movie that you are watching for the first time. But what if that movie was boring and was progressing backwards. What do you do with a movie you find dreary. You either switch off the DVD player or you move out of the theatre. Now he understood why people committed suicide. "This movie is so crappy; I can’t watch it no more". In the same lines “This life is so crappy, I can’t live it no more". Dan could not help smiling at this thought. He was either too crazy or he was too wise for his age. Or maybe he was neither. Maybe he was just a normal 26 year old fighting usual pangs of disillusionment. Dan knew he wanted to be normal, but hated the thought of being normal. "Do I want to break away from the crowd or do I want to break into the crowd" Dan thought. Dan's headache was getting worse. His confusion had run a full circle. Suddenly Dan felt an intense feeling of loneliness. He wished he could tell someone of his suffocation. Anyone. But he knew that everyone would be too busy. Too busy leading a life of direction. A direction, most probably shown by someone else. Dan wondered why he could not follow the direction his mother had shown him. Get a job. Settle down. Save for your retirement. Which meant to Dan leading a life of boredom and despair. I will rather lead a directionless life and face the scorn of people than follow a direction set forth by someone else, Dan decided. Egypt. That was the first country that came into his head. Dan decided to take the first flight to Egypt with whatever money he had saved. "Confusion is not so bad after all" Dan thought "Atleast you will get to see the pyramids". With that thought, Dan called up his travel agent to book the next flight to Egypt.
Seven weeks later, Dan got killed in the clash between Anti-Government protesters and Hosni Mubarak's supporters.