He had to face the question if he’s ready to give up life here on Earth for a chance to be one of the few who will wandered to such a distant place. On multiple psychological evaluations his answer was always unquestionable “yes.” That “yes,” though, was through conscious understanding that the questionnaire only proposes a fictitious scenario. He pretend to know the answer but as it was never meant to be verbalised completely – he avoided its implications. We read history books, look at old painting, photographs and sculptures and compute what life might have been like at such-and-such period in the past. We project that understanding of the past to calculate the future. On the surface, the changes are superficial – clothing, food, environment… but what isn’t considered in this mental  equation is our inability to see the world through eyes of those who were actually born back then. Michel Foucault starts his book on “Discipline and Punishment” sharing a description how in XVII century a person condemned of treason was ripped apart by four horses. Something unthinkable today – the violence of flesh torn to pieces – was acceptable back then. Just as we wonder at the historical acceptance by the past people of such violent punishment, we must also imagine their surprise at our astonishment. Something normal for them is extraordinary for us – likewise, the reverse must be true too. The planet is so far away, the mission asks its participants to commit not only their whole lives but multiples of them.  They all lied to themselves assuming that 364 years that they will spend traveling seem comprehensible, while in truth they will be returning to a place that will be beyond anyone’s comprehension. Nothing they know of the past, nothing they know of the present will prepare them for the future.

He was detached from commitment to people. His mother was long dead, she died when he was 17 and the father, who mostly raised him alone, was on the brink of merging his soul with the stars too. There was nothing unnatural here: the father dies first, then, millennials later him, his son. He had affairs, he had girlfriends. With some he considered if the relationship would ever last long – sometimes it did, other times it didn’t. The woman he was with he liked and enjoyed the time they spent together but he could never see himself falling in love. Love as extension of respect – yes, that could happen, but love as consuming unceasing desire – that he knew will never be there with her. They were companions sometimes taking advantage of each other bodies. Was he selfish to make the choice to go without telling her about it first? Even though he didn’t see their relationship working out, he still dreaded the confrontation. He knew she’ll ask many questions that he didn’t have answers to. They started dating shortly before he joined the Kaii mission. In one scenario he abandons life for 9 years, in the other it’s 364… Why did he decided to give up on life here? On the surface everything was working out so well for him. Good job, decent salary, the house, the girl, imaginary prospects of family (though probably not with this girl), some fame and recognition mostly for his adventurism rather than his writings… and yet something motivated him to abandon this middle-class success because he felt like a failure. Yes, under the patina of success he sensed that he hasn’t lived up to the fullest potential as if on a practical level he was all that he could be, but on spiritual level something was lacking. He strived to be excellent at what he does – learn as much about the world as possible and practiced to put that knowledge to use when time comes, but something, deep down, told him that those are superficial solutions to a fundamental problem: he wished he could relive his life over. When imagining how his life could turn out if he were to do it again, it was impossible for him to imagine anything different. This was a source of growing frustration. It seems he has reached the apex of possibilities within the realm of his chosen profession. He could only accomplish more if he stayed away from pursuing his passion and only imagined it. His fantasy then would be much more concrete but also just barely outside of reach, he would live in peace understanding that his dream could be fulfilled – give him happiness – if only it came true. His life’s joy would come from possibility of dream fulfillment. He can’t fantasize that anymore – most of what he has set out to accomplish, he did – he can’t escape into platitudes of “what if” thinking up cozy scenarios. By facing the reality he also had to accept all that came with it. He was a victim of peculiar condition that stipulates that our dreams are not meant to come true, for if they do, we abandon the pleasure of fantasy. He wants a life do-over but can’t imagine what it shall be. It’s as if he wants life to choose the new direction for him. He wants to be away from here (this time) so that he can dream again unchained from imposition of current reality. He wants new rules and new structures that shall shape his life.

He remembered the first time jumping out of an airplane with a parachute. He always dreamt of flying, or rather falling. In his dreams he could sense the ground getting closer and closer as if it wasn’t gravity pulling on his body but rather pushing against it the closer he got to the ground. Each time it was both scary and exhilarating experience – the joy came from avoiding the crash the last minute. He sat down on the ledge of plane’s gate and strapped to his instructor they both jumped into the abyss of blue sky. Falling, he was hit a stream of air trying to force itself into his nostrils. There was so much air pounding his face that he started think of suffocation – dying from lack of air while bombarded with air. The incredibly loud amount of air passing by his ears also produced deafening effect. Instructed with hand gestures to pull the cord, he let the canopy open and he instantaneously entered peace and tranquility. He looked at the scenery slowly moving under his feet considering that nothing matched his dreams. The sensation of gravity – whether pulling or pushing wasn’t there. His brain raced because he’s accomplished something extraordinary – he’s defined gravity – and yet he realised that it was also nothing like he’s imagined it to be. He didn’t feel the force of incoming ground pressing against his body in any way. From then on he never flew/felt again in his dreams – turning this fantasy into a reality have destroyed any future dreams. He understood that as you learn about the world more and more dreams escape into indifference.

As he struggled to motivate himself in countless training exercises, he remembered helping his father renovate old wooden floors. He was replacing aged wood-like panels with new ones. He laid down one plank, then another, then another. Every few planks he would sit down and look at his “creation”. He was struggling to force himself to stand up and keep on building the floor. He always liked working with hands so he couldn’t understand how something that gave him so much joy in the past now was so cumbersome. This tremendous apathy took over his body. It was easier to sit down and do nothing even though it wasn’t the answer to the problem as the floors still had to be done. Between laying each plank there was a astounding amount of time wasted. He thought himself as a different man, maybe 10 years older sitting in a garden staring at trees and thinking – pretending that thinking is an action. Then, he imagined, not content with just staring and thinking about the world, he would sit at a desk and look out the window writing, maybe writing about meaning of it all. There is the action of writing. But then, he fantasized further about yet another discontent, for that new him neither thinking nor writing was enough – that him needed to experience the world through actions of doing. An image of him climbing a mountain flashed. Then another definition of action – him as someone dissatisfied with just thinking, just writing, just experiencing – through this discontent he wanted others to share the thoughts and experiences. The climb becomes relevant not due to its difficulty or enlightening quality, but because those thoughts and enlightenment could be shared with others. Each version of himself was content with one particular definition of “action”: thinking as action, writing the thoughts as action, experience as action, writing about experience as action, publishing the written account of the experiences as action, exposing others to the thoughts and experiences as action. Is one kind of those actions better than another, or is each version of himselfs living in a fictitious version of reality where the choices of definitions – this “action” is better than that “action” – indulge the ego shielding one from truth? Is any of those definitions really closer to truth than another? Action of thinking seems the purest as nothing is changed in the world – no physical difference takes place. But it also might be perceived as the least pure specifically because it’s so selfish – nothing in the world changes other than the neural arrangements in one’s brain. Looking, not thinking, might be considered even “purer” as nothing changes in the brain and yet the world moves forward in that time span – we find ourselves in a different time then when we started – the world has changed and our body physically has aged by the few moment, minutes or hours and yet our mind hasn’t. Taking those frequent breaks during his father’s house renovation, he still was thinking about how his attitude towards this activity has changed. He imagined himself much older and sensed that this is what getting old must feel like – you lose a desire for anything and would rather just sit and stare doing nothing. Sitting in a wheelchair of some retirement home looking out the window at the passing clouds and the shadows of shimmering leaves of the tree outside, his thoughts were nonexistent – just waiting for death. What terrified him while working on those damn floors was how close he was to this intelectual death – to lack any impact on the world – failing to change one’s mind – even that of his own… This desire to think rather than act was a scourge of his existence. He hated himself for spending too much on rearranging thoughts rather than on rearranging atoms of reality. He needed action, he must go against his particular desire!

He used to wake up every day with a sense of purpose – he knew that his role in life is to go and not stop before reaching a destination. The destination was often vague if ever really defined – against this separation between goal and purpose, he used to be happy. The happiness came despite his constant avoidance to truly define that what matters to him. He ran from himself building thicker and thicker walls around his ego. He never expected that the spark for living can extinguish so quickly. Despite his ambivalence he suspected that he would rather keep on living than face death. It’s as if the prospect of death was as unappealing as prospect of living. This is what stops him from walking into an airlock without his helmet on and opening the outside gate exposing body to the vacuum of space. He does not care to keep on living but he also don’t care to be dead either. What scares him is the ease with which we can give up on life. He has experienced the kind of torpor a person feels before meeting death. He knows how easy it is not to care walking into her embrace. Describing the final moments dying people often speak of peace as if one has experienced a supreme calm – he knows it’s a false pretense. Peace is in contrast to indifference which is no desire for anything, including living. Death comes and takes life unopposed – this is the kind of indifference he’s most terrified of. No, he doesn’t want want to be dead, he just wants to experience passion for living again. Somehow he imagines that running away so far into the future will rekindle the fire again. Somehow. Time defines our reality – it shapes who we’ve become and who we’ll be tomorrow. If yesterday is as irrelevant as tomorrow, death loses its meaning too. We are born, we live, we tick off the marks on the timeline of existence and a new circle of existence begins… Our death. We quietly pass on the burden of living to others. A few names will be remembered by the posterity, the memory of many will dissolve into ether soon to be forgotten even by their children’s children. We need to care about tomorrow so that we are compelled to act today.