There’s an age-old question: “What is the meaning of life?” Some people dive into the depths of philosophy to answer it.
For others, the meaning of life is the pursuit of a dream.
And some don’t see any point in the question at all and won’t even try to answer it.
Countless opinions, dividing people into a measurable number of groups and communities.
For Samuel, the meaning of life had always been simply to live.
That’s quite a tautology, but there’s no other way to put it.
Live just to live.
Not very original, kind of stupid in a way, and not at all ambitious.
It’s also open to many interpretations, which adds to the confusion.
But in Samuel’s case, those words should be taken literally.
For the last six years of his existence, he had only followed the will of the only person close to him in this life.
A person who left this world at such an inopportune time, leaving him alone in it.
A tragic story with dramatic elements, the kind that amateur authors love to write about and directors lovingly portray in movies.
In reality, it wasn’t interesting at all, completely gray.
Though it all depends on your point of view.
From the outside, it might have seemed quite dramatic.
Samuel spent most of his life with his mother in an unremarkable village in the middle of nowhere.
He didn’t remember his father and had no idea who he was or where he was.
He never really asked, either.
His smiling and kind mother would get very sad whenever questions about his other parent came up.
Samuel didn’t want to make his mother sad, so he never asked those kinds of questions as a child.
When he grew up, he was already used to it and simply didn’t pay attention to that fact.
The only thing he ever found out was that his mother had arrived in the village not long before and was already pregnant at the time.
With no adult man in the house and his mother constantly busy, Samuel grew up handy and independent.
His mother’s constant busyness was forced.
Money was always tight, and the woman had to work herself ragged, often leaving the boy home alone all day.
Under her constant lectures about the importance of education, he managed to graduate from high school with decent grades.
Then, following his mother’s advice, he moved to the city and enrolled in a university.
Six months later, news came from his home village that he had become an orphan.
From his mother, Samuel received the money from the sale of their house (which she had sold just a few weeks before her death, as if she had foreseen it), a desire to get a higher education to somehow make a living in this life, and an overwhelming sense of loss that hadn’t faded even years later.
Despite the suddenness of it, the guy wasn’t all that surprised.
In the last few years, his mother had given the impression of someone holding on by a thread.
Samuel decided to move to the city specifically to relieve her of that extra burden, because he felt like a burden.
He wanted her to live for herself for a while, to relax a little, to perk up, and maybe even find a new partner instead of the father he never knew.
But no.
The impression turned out to be too real, and the woman only had enough strength to raise her chick and push it out of the nest.
After the heavy, heart-wrenching funeral, Samuel returned to the city and began carrying out his mother’s last instruction: to study.
Studying didn’t come easy to him.
Not because he was stupid, no.
It just so happened that even living in a dormitory, his scholarship alone wasn’t enough for a normal life, so he had to get a job.
The government also paid some kind of benefits and even promised him an apartment after graduation, but the extra money often came late, and Samuel didn’t really believe in the country’s generosity.
So he was quite pessimistic about getting his own place and grabbed any opportunity to add to his savings.
This affected his attendance and, consequently, his grades.
Luckily, Samuel was lucky with his teachers and fellow students.
The teachers understood his situation and gave him as many allowances as possible, while his classmates didn’t try to complain about unfair treatment or favoritism, which could have made things even harder.
After getting his coveted diploma, Samuel, still without an apartment six months later, went off to the army.
There, he made a good impression on some influential people, which significantly sped up the process of getting his own living space after being discharged.
Yes, the neighborhood was far from the safest.
Yes, it was not very convenient to get to work from there.
But the building was in good condition, the apartment was cozy, and everything worked perfectly.
And most importantly, it was his.
This is how Samuel would have continued living, just like the majority.
Maybe someday he would have gotten married, found a job in his field, made friends and buddies.
But no.
This story is a little different…