Up, Up, and Away

What's really up there?

The 8th Avenue subway station was for the most part empty with the exception of flickering lights, crushed soda cans, and two strangers.

Adam had just finished a long day’s shift. His shirt was creased under a worn bomber jacket, the kind with frayed cuffs and a broken zipper. He leaned on a concrete pillar with his nametag still clipped to his belt and phone hanging loose in one hand.

Across from him stood Jacob. With highly pressed khakis and a buttoned-up shirt that looked slightly too clean for this part of the city. A leather satchel hung from his shoulder, worn smooth by travel. He held a slim stack of booklets in one hand with careful smiles and hopeful eyes.

They waited in a station that smelled of old concrete and lost time.

ADAM (looking up, half to himself):
Strange how low the sky feels down here.

JACOB (without looking):
It’s just concrete. Nothing poetic about it.

ADAM:
Funny. How we build everything to rise, skyscrapers, dreams, and even families.

JACOB:
You a philosopher, or just tired?

ADAM (smirking):
Ten hours stocking shelves over and over again will make anyone sound wise. Or crazy.

JACOB:
Well, I'm just visiting. Walked through temples in Ladakh, alleyways in Detroit, souks in Fez to spread the word of Christ. If you’d like, here is a copy of.

ADAM (interruption):
I’m good. If you’re here to sell me religion, no thanks. I don’t believe in that kind of stuff.

JACOB:
What do you believe in then?

ADAM (leans off the pillar, crosses his arms):
I believe in putting food on the table. In showing up. But most importantly in not wasting what my parents gave up everything for.

JACOB:
That’s still faith, in a way.

ADAM:
Not in the way you mean. I don’t pray. I don’t look up hoping someone’s listening to solve all my problems. I look down and see what I can actually do to change my life. At working harder. At affording price tags. At my daughter’s lunchbox. That’s where God lives for me, if at all anymore.

JACOB:
You were raised religious?

ADAM (nods):
Catholic. Hardline. My mother used to light candles for everything, exams, rent checks, stomach aches. But she stopped when we moved here. No time for saints in Brooklyn.

JACOB (quietly):
And you never went back to it?

ADAM:
Not once. Because what kind of God makes my dad mop hotel floors while some banker prays for a new Tesla?

JACOB (gently):
Maybe it’s not God who does that. Maybe it’s us.

ADAM (shakes his head):
That’s too easy. Faith always wants to blame the system, never the silence. I stopped believing the day I realized hard work didn’t equal grace. It just meant you were tired.

JACOB (nodding slowly):
And yet you still work.

ADAM:
Because someone has to. Because I have a daughter who needs shoes and a roof. Because I’d rather believe in groceries than ghosts. That gives my life meaning.

JACOB:
But do you ever wonder what it’s all for?

ADAM (looking up toward the dim station lights):
Every day. You work, you push, you sacrifice. Sometimes it feels like just a long climb toward nothing but more stairs. One step after another. A little bit higher each time on the imaginary ladder.

JACOB:
Is that all there is?

ADAM:
I have meaning in seeing my daughter. The look on her face when I bring home her favorite cereal. And if you’re trying to get me to say Heaven. I’m not going to.

JACOB:
And when the climb feels endless?

ADAM:
That’s when you hold on to why you started. Not because you believe in some perfect up there, but because you believe in what you carry with you now.

A train begins rumbling in the distance.

JACOB:
Is it life that gives you meaning?

ADAM:
No, I think it is death that gives life meaning. The thought that one day, all I’ve built and all of me, my thoughts, beliefs, and ideas, will just be with a moment’s notice gone. So, I can’t just stop today. Everything I’ve done and ought to do.

JACOB:
I don’t think anyone is ever truly gone. Maybe you’ll be a piece of soil somewhere out there in the far away lands or up there.

JACOB (voice fading away):
And maybe heaven isn’t a place at all. Maybe you find your own heaven.

ADAM (looks at his direction):
Or maybe heaven’s just five minutes of silence after a twelve-hour shift.

They both smile, tired but alive. Jacob stays behind, eyes still on the fading train. He then opens his leather satchel for a small book and writes the following:

“Religious. Or non-religious. We all find our meaning somehow. Death is the single best invention of life because it gives us meaning to do what is good. For something up there or down here.”

I finally wake Adam on the train.