The Purpose

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Translated by Andrey Summers  

When a person is all but ready to emerge into the world, God appears to him with a giant, fur hat in His hands.

"Draw," says God, and the person pulls from the hat a paper with his Purpose written on it. Then, off the person goes into the world. Here, he looks to see what his Purpose might be, but the paper's gone- it didn't follow him here. He didn't even have time to read it.

For some time, the person remains hopeful that the Purpose might eventually drop out after him, and so he crawls around monitoring his mother, tirelessly, but no- nothing of the sort seems to fall out of her. So, apparently, he has to use his own round head. Ears and everything. That's why he's a person anyway, and not a six-legged piece of shit, say.

What's life to shit on legs? Its Purpose is imprinted square and certain, like the program inside your washing machine, for doing colored laundry. A person, meanwhile, has to figure it all out himself. All himself. The poor bastard.

It's good when his Purpose is simple- to have a son, plant a tree, or what have you. Or, let's say, get sick as a kid, and die. Easy. But what if he's predestined to axe down an old lady in the Sennaya Square, so that later someone can write a novel about it? And what if he's not, but he axed her anyway?

Really, figuring out your Purpose in life isn't that difficult: if a person continually does something for no reason, if he doesn't get paid for it, and fuck if anyone even needs it, that means that this, in fact, is his Purpose. It's different with people that refuse to do anything for no reason, of course, it's more complicated for them.

Achievement of your Purpose differs from other pass-times in that the reward for success does not exist on this Earth. You'll either get it after Death, or never maybe, it's not even that important.

But to Achieve his Purpose, a person needs to live somehow- eat things, and so forth. Thus, he's forced to fuck around with all the other nonsense, the reward for which is, conversely, given right now or, worst case, on Monday. But a person can't even do this right, because there he is fucking around with his other nonsense, and suddenly he feels that it's time to Fulfill his Purpose for a while. In this case, he's forced to immediately drop everything, send everyone to hell, disconnect the phone, and Fulfill. Because this, right here, is the only reason he even exists. There are no others, and never will be.

Yet people keep hammering on the door, tearing apart the phone, yelling, banging their fists on the desk at him, and not giving him money. This is because they, themselves, aren't Fulfilling their own Purpose properly, but half-assed-ly: they have a family, kids, business, evil mother-in-law, work, no time. And if they see a person Achieving his Purpose effectively, they turn green. Because they know well what happens to a person who Doesn't Achieve his Purpose. Or at least they can guess.

People die for only two reasons: Either they've Achieved their Purpose in life, or Creation had understood, that they don't even intend to Achieve it. Nobody fucks with Creation.

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