Numbing Existentialism
Bills Paid by Number
Bills Paid by Number
Setting: A quiet, boundless space resembling a sun-drenched Grecian atrium. In the center stands a single, ancient olive tree. SOPHIA, robed in simple, deep blue linen, pours water from a clay pitcher into a basin. Two men, dressed in the styles of their respective eras, approach her from different directions.
Sophia: William. Bill. Welcome. Please, sit.
(She gestures to a smooth stone bench encircling the tree. They sit, observing her and each other with curiosity.)
Sophia: I have brought you here to discuss a type of accounting. A ledger kept not in gold or coin, but in feeling and in action. A matter of bills, paid by number.
William: (Voice low and resonant, like stones grinding together) An accounting, you say. I know of only one that matters. The one that separates the pulse from the void. In my reckoning, a page filled with the red ink of anguish is infinitely more valuable than a blank one. To feel nothing, to be nothing… that is the only true bankruptcy. The suffering, the grief, the toil—that is the bitter currency we pay for the privilege of a heartbeat.
Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.
— William Faulkner (1897-1962)
Sophia: (Nods, her gaze serene) So, the bill for existence is paid with the experience of it, no matter how painful. The debt is to life itself.
Bill: (Leans forward, his tone sharp and analytical) That’s a fine sentiment for the individual soul, William. A noble one. But I’m worried about a different ledger—the collective one. We’ve become a society obsessed with what we are owed. We’ve drafted a magnificent document that lists everything we are entitled to, every freedom, every right. It’s a glorious statement of credit.
Sophia: And the corresponding debt?
Bill: Exactly! We forgot to attach the invoice. We handed out the charter of privileges but neglected to write the charter of obligations. We celebrate what our country must do for us, but we fall silent on what we must do for our country and for each other. The system is out of balance. We are running a moral deficit, and I fear the bill for that is coming due.
William: (Looks at Bill, a flicker of understanding in his eyes) A man’s obligation is to his own heart first. To endure. To prevail.
Bill: But no man endures on an island! Your very ability to feel that profound, personal pain you value so much is protected by a framework of shared duty. The freedom to write your tragedies is secured by the responsibility of others to defend that freedom.
Sophia: (Steps between them, her presence calming the air) You are both speaking of the same truth, simply viewing it from different ends of a telescope. You see, William, the profound suffering and joy you champion—that singular, sacred number of the self—is the very stuff of life. It is the first bill. The bill of consciousness.
(She turns her gaze to Bill.)
Sophia: And you, Bill, speak of the second bill. The bill of civilization. It is paid not by one, but by the many. It is the uncountable sum of small efforts, of duties fulfilled and consideration given. It is the tax on our rights.
(She dips her hands in the basin of water and lets it run through her fingers.)
Sophia: Do you not see how they are linked? The pain William would choose over nothingness is so often the friction of community. It is the struggle to meet the obligations you speak of, Bill. It is the agony of compromise, the burden of empathy, the weight of another’s welfare. The bill for one is paid with the currency of the other.
William: So the struggle I endure is, in part, the price for the society he wants?
Bill: And the society I want is impossible without people willing to endure that personal struggle for a cause greater than themselves.
We have the Bill of Rights. What we need is a Bill of Responsibilities.
— Bill Maher (1956-present)
Sophia: Precisely. One bill is paid by the number one—the self. The other is paid by the numbers of the many—the society. One is a debt to existence, the other a debt to each other. They cannot be separated. To demand your rights without accepting your responsibilities is to expect a harvest from a field you refused to sow. And to embrace your pain without acknowledging its connection to the whole is to see only the thread, and not the tapestry it helps create.
(A long silence settles in the atrium, filled only by the imagined rustle of olive leaves.)
Sophia: The accounting is never finished. Every right claimed, every responsibility met, every joy felt, every pain endured… it is all just another entry in the ledger. The bills are always being paid, by number.
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