The Egg
By: Andy Weir

You were on your way home when you died.
It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.
And that’s when you met me.
“What… what happened?” You asked. “Where am I?”
“You died,” I said, matter-of-factly. No point in mincing words.
“There was a… a truck and it was skidding…”
“Yup,” I said.
“I… I died?”
“Yup. But don’t feel bad about it. Everyone dies,” I said.
You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me. “What is this place?” You asked. “Is this the afterlife?”
“More or less,” I said.
“Are you god?” You asked.
“Yup,” I replied. “I’m God.”
“My kids… my wife,” you said.
“What about them?”
“Will they be all right?”
“That’s what I like to see,” I said. “You just died and your main concern is for your family. That’s good stuff right there.”
You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn’t have time to grow contempt for you. Your wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty for feeling relieved.”
“Oh,” you said. “So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?”
“Neither,” I said. “You’ll be reincarnated.”
“Ah,” you said. “So the Hindus were right,”
“All religions are right in their own way,” I said. “Walk with me.”
You followed along as we strode through the void. “Where are we going?”
“Nowhere in particular,” I said. “It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”
“So what’s the point, then?” You asked. “When I get reborn, I’ll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won’t matter.”
“Not so!” I said. “You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don’t remember them right now.”
I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. “Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had.
“You’ve been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for long enough, you’d start remembering everything. But there’s no point to doing that between each life.”
“How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”
“Oh lots. Lots and lots. An in to lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD.”
“Wait, what?” You stammered. “You’re sending me back in time?”
“Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from.”
“Where you come from?” You said.
“Oh sure,” I explained “I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there are others like me. I know you’ll want to know what it’s like there, but honestly you wouldn’t understand.”
“Oh,” you said, a little let down. “But wait. If I get reincarnated to other places in time, I could have interacted with myself at some point.”
“Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own lifespan you don’t even know it’s happening.”
“So what’s the point of it all?”
“Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously? You’re asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”
“Well it’s a reasonable question,” you persisted.
I looked you in the eye. “The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.”
“You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”
“No, just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect.”
“Just me? What about everyone else?”
“There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you and me.”
You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…”
“All you. Different incarnations of you.”
“Wait. I’m everyone!?”
“Now you’re getting it,” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back.
“I’m every human being who ever lived?”
“Or who will ever live, yes.”
“I’m Abraham Lincoln?”
“And you’re John Wilkes Booth, too,” I added.
“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.
“And you’re the millions he killed.”
“I’m Jesus?”
“And you’re everyone who followed him.”
You fell silent.
“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”
You thought for a long time.
“Why?” You asked me. “Why do all this?”
“Because someday, you will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my child.”
“Whoa,” you said, incredulous. “You mean I’m a god?”
“No. Not yet. You’re a fetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born.”
“So the whole universe,” you said, “it’s just…”
“An egg.” I answered. “Now it’s time for you to move on to your next life.”

And I sent you on your way.

Neuroscience has shown that the brain changes with experience.

Taxi drivers who have ferried passengers around London for years have larger hippocampi, a region of the brain important for spatial awareness and memory, compared to newer cab drivers.

Similarly, experienced musicians show higher grey matter volume in motor, auditory and visual-spatial regions, suggesting their brains have been altered through daily practice.

When the brain is damaged – such as during a stroke – it is possible to recover lost capacity through therapy. Other areas of the brain take over from those damaged.
The brain’s ability to adapt in response to experience is known as neuroplasticity. Just as exercise affects the body, the same is true of the brain. This process can happen quite quickly: learning to juggle or play the piano over just a few days alters brain density.

This is empowering news because it suggests that we aren’t stuck with our old brains and our old habits. We can plough new furrows, cultivating freedom to shape the future, based on what we do in the present, or how we train the mind.

Researchers have explored the neuroplastic changes that occur with mindfulness training, and are finding that practitioners’ brains seem to reflect their expertise. Activity, structure and volume are different in parts of the pre-frontal cortex, the area of the brain which is associated strongly with reasoning and decision making. Experienced meditators also show high levels of gamma wave activity, which is thought to be related to increased awareness.

Changes start to be seen in the brains of new meditators after a few days or weeks of training. As they practise mindfulness, regions of the brain related to learning, memory, mind-body awareness, cognitive control, emotional reactivity, sense of self and other markers of wellbeing are all affected.

It doesn’t take much, it appears, for patterns of activity in the brain to shift. As new grooves are formed in our ways of seeing, relating and behaving, so these are reflected and perhaps reinforced by neural shifts.

I’m appalled by the amount of burnout that’s coming into my office on a daily basis. Many corporate veterans stumble into therapy, harrowed, hollowed out from their daily grind. Often they have created a lifestyle that keeps them painfully tethered to a rigid schedule, to flawed systems that bribe them with bonuses and shiny toys while they steal their very life force. Their intimate relationships have withered from years of neglect. Silent, desperately exhausted date nights, high anxiety, terminal insomnia and multiple health issues (IBS, high cholesterol, hypertension, addiction) stalk their waking hours. On the couch they stare ahead with a fixed gaze, saying things like…”I don’t know how this happened…” or “my wife wants to leave me” or “I just need a couple more years and then I’ll have enough”. Their children are often starving for a loving gaze, a gentle touch… much like they did when they were their children’s age. Sometimes they tie themselves to a mountain bike, or gym contact, or a whisky bottle in a vain attempt to fend off the inevitability of decay, productivity becomes the god they pay their tithe to.

These new corporate gods proselytize about employee wellness, wringing their hands in mock dismay as they simultaneously count the cost of daily absenteeism. The poor buggers they have eviscerated are desperate to be viewed in a good light, anxious overachievers…working themselves empty to wring a golden glimpse of management’s brief, affirming gaze. Always soul- hungry…always tired.

“How we spend our days,” Annie Dillard memorably wrote in her soul-stretching meditation on the life of presence, “is, of course, how we spend our lives.” And yet most of us spend our days in what Kierkegaard believed to be our greatest source of unhappiness — a refusal to recognize that “busy is a decision” and that presence is infinitely more rewarding than productivity. I frequently worry that being ‘productive’ is the surest way to lull ourselves into a trance of passivity and busyness the greatest distraction from living, as we coast through our lives day after day, showing up for our obligations but being absent from our selves, mistaking the doing for the being.

Despite a steadily swelling human life expectancy, these concerns seem more urgent than ever — and yet they are hardly unique to our age. In fact, they go as far back as the record of human experience and endeavor. It is unsurprising, then, that the best treatment of the subject is also among the oldest: Roman philosopher Seneca’s spectacular 2,000-year-old treatise On the Shortness of Life— a poignant reminder of what we so deeply intuit yet so easily forget and so chronically fail to put into practice.

Seneca writes: (complements of Brainpickings)

“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.”

I too know the perils, but knowing is not enough.
Action is required.
So I encourage us all to reflect during this holiday period, to set aside the stress that is inherent in Christmas shopping and family dramas, to just pause for an hour or two and reflect on how you are spending your precious life.

Is the midlife crisis just an excuse?
By Emma Jacobs

Elizabeth has had enough of life as a City lawyer. Now, in her mid-thirties, she has decided to change careers. “Life is short,” she says, wincing at the cliché.
As the first person in her family to make it to university, Elizabeth – who does not want to use her real name – had felt obliged to follow through with a sensible profession. Her twenties were consumed by office all-nighters, finding her way and proving herself. When she hit her thirties, while the hours continued to be punishing, she felt able to lift her nose from the grindstone and evaluate her career. “I am not as engaged in my work as my peers,” she reflects. To make partner she would have to crank up her commitment – and she just cannot bear to do that. So in her spare time she studies psychology, in anticipation of switching professional tracks.

She admits to feelings that border on depression but views them as a “productive indication” that she no longer wants to be a lawyer and desires a job with “more meaning”. A “midlife crisis” is how she views it.
“Midlife crisis” is not a clinical disorder. However, Dr Michael Sinclair, a consultant psychologist based in the City, has observed increasing numbers of thirtysomethings experiencing profound anxiety about their career choices and lives. “These are problems more commonly associated with people in their mid-forties thinking about mortality. They are coming out of recession, a period of being single-minded. They are burnt out and asking ‘what’s the point of work?’”
Louise Matthews, a former personal assistant in recruitment and insurance, believes that the “midlife crisis is beginning earlier these days”. She suggests it could be “because we have too much choice and information coming”, which can lead to feelings of dissatisfaction but also paralysis. “It can be pretty overwhelming.”
The notion of a midlife crisis, is contentious. Coined in 1965 by Elliot Jaques, a psychologist, he described it as “the adult encounter with the conception of life to be lived in the setting of an approaching personal death”. In popular mythology it is generally characterised by fortysomething men swapping families and jobs for sports cars, hair plugs and young girlfriends – all rather silly.
However, research published earlier this year found an average midlife dip in happiness – or subjective wellbeing as it is described by economists – happened between 40 and 42. Professor Nattavudh Powdthavee, co-author of the longitudinal research across three countries, says this confirms previous studies that show a hill-shape relationship between age and the use of antidepressants. It builds on research, published in 2012, that found chimpanzees and orangutans also experience a U-shape in happiness (as reported by zookeepers rather than the apes themselves). Prof Powdthavee says this suggests there could be biological explanations behind the midlife nadir. He sees this as a reason to be optimistic. “When you know this, you can go through the period thinking at some point it will get better.”
Mid-life crises can manifest themselves in different ways. “It is a transitionary phase,” says Dr Derek Milne, a psychologist from Newcastle University and author of Coping With a Mid-Life Crisis. “It can be intermittent or express itself as vague disquiet.”
Perhaps people in middle age can learn from the elderly who feel less regret and have adapted.

Dr Hannes Schwandt of Princeton University believes midlife, unlike infancy and old age, is under-researched. Last year, he published research focused on “unmet expectations”. It found the young are optimistic – perhaps even “over-optimistic” – while those in their forties and fifties feel regret, before making their peace in older age. “Perhaps people in middle age can learn from the elderly who feel less regret and have adapted,” he suggests.
The fallout from midlife malaise might make people less productive, notes Dr Schwandt. Employers might therefore want to take note. “It could improve peoples’ wellbeing if we acknowledged the problem”, he says.
Jodie Rogers, a careers coach, says work is a source of crisis for her middle-aged clients. “They ask themselves what legacy they are leaving behind. They start to feel bad about feeling discontented. They have a job and pay cheque, they don’t know if they have the right to seek more. There is a real tug of war between the feeling they should be satisfied with their life and wanting to do something more meaningful.”
Paul Dolan, professor of behavioural science at the London School of Economics, and author of Happiness by Design, believes we need a mix of purpose and pleasure in order to feel truly happy. In a forthcoming paper, he argues that much of the economic literature on midlife crises focuses on our evaluations of what makes us happy rather than our actual experiences. In other words, the stories we tell ourselves about what makes us happy – that a prestigious job is good – even if our day-to-day experience of the work makes us miserable.
Other experts, however, dismiss any connection between age and crisis. Susan Krauss Whitbourne, professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, sees age as a “social construct, highly dependent on the individual”. The attraction of seeing midlife as a period prone to crisis, she says is akin to horoscopes: “It gives you certainty. It gives an excuse and an expectation.”
She does, however, think that today, more people want to express their true sense of self in their job.
Elizabeth agrees – she says her parents are baffled by her career dissatisfaction: “They say it is a luxury of my generation. They never thought of enjoying their careers – they just got on with it.”
Many people, says Prof Whitbourne, fantasise about dramatically quitting their jobs. But, she says, “it is better to make baby steps towards a change”.
Dr Sinclair agrees: “People can be too goal-focused. They have ticked off making money and career goals, and wonder what next?” He helps them to understand life is not about ticking off their goals but living by their values. Rather than resign, they may find that making small changes in their jobs, for example collaborating with colleagues or mentoring a junior employee, can make work feel more meaningful.

Arguably one of the biggest career anxieties for people in midlife is age discrimination, writes Emma Jacobs. “Older workers are often targeted during downturns because they are more experienced employees,” explains Patricia Cohen, author of In Our Prime: The Invention of Middle Age , “Their wages are higher and they may have more extensive benefits.” Moreover, the premium that many businesses put on youth, or the association between youth and creativity or innovation, can make middle-aged workers feel devalued.
Meanwhile, the ability to shift careers in midlife without worrying about income has become increasingly rare, she argues. “Those who have such options are very fortunate.”

October and people are soul-weary. They come in, clutching the fragmented parts of their lives to their chests  like children with arms that are too small for their big lives.  I am often struck with awe by the sheer determination some  people show in getting through each day.

So many struggle for so long, alone, convinced that no one understands their plight.

The addicts, wrestling with crippling craving, desperate to gather enough escape velocity to step into warm sunlight. The depressive sin-eaters, suffocating under an internalized critical, punitive voice that tells them that they are never ‘good enough’, constantly viewing their bodies and their efforts as places of defeat. Those crucified by fear, the world crawling with terrifying pitfalls filled with horrible fates. The narcissists, hypnotized by tales of their own glory, full of brittle rage and fearful of their own shadows. Not to mention the multitude of others who painstakingly construct public facing selves stuck together with chewing gum, rubber bands and fragile hope.

At some stage, we all unravel just a little bit. A small crack appears in the reflection we see of our selves. Some people choose to ignore the cracks, treating them as rumours until they are finally forced (often by calamity) to look at what they have repressed for so long…and then, all they can see is darkness.  Others choose to obsess over the tiniest of hairline fractures (which we all have), scratching them into a gaping, infected wounds where every interaction is contaminated by its distorted taint.

What is important, is to get some perspective. I have few friends who can hold me accountable, with fierce compassion. Therapy is certainly not the cure all but it can help in bringing one gently to the working surface required for growth.

The truth is, you are not alone, nor have you ever been. You are connected in ways which you may refuse to use, or no longer trust, or do not even know exist. Reach out, extend those numb fingers to an other. Blow warmth into your doubting heart. Support is available even in the darkest of hours.

I now know this to be true.