Functional Definition

(For a newer draft of this story, click here.)

A sensation of lightness rose within Josh and Ryan as the elevator they shared descended. Both stared ahead at their golden reflections in the elevator doors. Neither were certain of how to proceed in conversation. After a final electronic tone, the doors opened onto the lobby. Both exited. Josh looked down at the maroon carpet slightly in front of his feet as he walked; Ryan watched the pedestrians passing beyond the glass front of the downtown building.

"How can mornings be so long?" Josh asked.

Ryan put his hand on the bar on the revolving door. It resisted. Ryan felt weak. With additional effort, the door began to spin. Josh followed behind, awkwardly jumping into the next cross-section at the last possible moment. The cool fall air felt the same but smelled different than the air inside the building. "Didn't you have something to work on?" Ryan inquired in response.

"Yeah. Data to enter, as always. I haven't written a report in a while. I'm frankly looking forward to taking the last cup of coffee, so that I have to make a new pot."

The two wove through the median of the foot-traffic. Their aenemic city left them plenty of space to travel.

"Sounds rough."

"Yeah. Real rough."

Josh glanced at Ryan, whose stern countenance emminated dignity. "How do you go on?"

"How do you mean?"

"You do the same stuff as me, more or less. You've been doing it for a few months longer than I have. It doesn't seem to phase you."

"What other option do you have?"

Josh considered the question briefly. "No viable ones that I can find. That's part of the problem."

"That you have to work?"

"No, that you have to do crap work like this. I know. I know. We're both lucky to have jobs, but they could be done by computers...should be done by computers, really. It's completely mindless. Bodiless, too, for that matter. Just the fingers, wrists, and a little eye ball movement. It is a miserable existence and I am pretty much stuck with it."

"If you think about it, it's miserable." Ryan scanned the street for approaching cars and promptly jaywalked. He drew tepid satisfaction from breaking the law. Josh intentionally stomped on a cigarette butt that leaked a ribbon of smoke. "What can you do?" Ryan added.

"Didn't you hear me? There's nothing I can do. I said that was part of the problem."

"Part of the solution, too."

"What? How so?" Josh squinted and shielded his eyes from a blade of sunlight that stabbed between the high-rises.

"Well if there's nothing to do, don't give it another thought."

"You think I am trying to? I don't court these feelings. But if you take a moment to consider what you are doing for hours upon hours...the feelings come on their own. Type, type, type. Click, click, click. It wears on you. The clock moves so slow and when the whistle blows, you feel like you haven't done a single significant action all day."

Ryan shrugged. "That's work for you."

"Shit, Ryan. Some help you are."

Ryan glanced over the light blue fabric covering his shoulder at Josh. "Who said I was a helper? We're co-workers, not soul mates. You've gotta stiffen your lip sometimes."

Josh looked up to accuse Ryan with a stare. Ryan was eying the placard in front of their destination. He surveyed the happy-hour prices and thought he should return one evening. Josh was surprised by Ryan's response. He decided not to speak any further. Having reached the cafe, they entered and fell into line. The din from the lunch crowd careened off the walls.

After deciding what he would order, Ryan thought he would put an end to Josh's complaints. He pointed to the menu. "You see that? There before you is approximately one quarter of the purpose of life. One part eating, one part sleeping, one part copulation, and one part...tending to miscellaneous necesities--shelter, clothes, and the like. In twenty minutes, you can check one of those boxes off your list. That's what we get up to do everyday, check off boxes. Doesn't that make you feel better?"

"Are you serious?"

"Yes. Of course. That's how I get by. I have a simple understanding of my life and what I am to do. Jobs don't matter, so long as they let you keep checking off those boxes everyday. Anyone who's looking for more than that is looking for trouble."

Josh's mind hopped from objection to objection against Ryan's position. He was hesitant to respond and realized he had opened up to the wrong person. The two shuffled forward as the line advanced. Josh flinched at the sound of a plate dropping to his right. He turned towards the source of the noise. No one else paid attention to the accident besides another woman at the nearby table who was trying to console her clumsy companion. Josh resumed the discussion, unable to bear the offense of Ryan's version of simplicity. "Well, that's a bleak outlook."

"Mine? Bleak? I'm as happy as a clam. I eat, punch in, punch out, eat, punch in, punch out, eat, if I'm lucky...copulate a little later, and sleep. So what if there's some typing in there. How I make my money doesn't matter. Nearly every day of the week for...twenty good years years...I have the opportunity to be contented. And, you know as luck would have it, the things we need to do are delightful. I enjoy all of them. I look forward to them everyday. So I've got to spend a few hours toiling to get there. That's a small price to pay for so much satisfaction." Ryan interrupted his speech to scratch behind his ear. "Have you tried the pad thai here? It's scrumptious."

Josh thought he was living through his reason for not socializing with anyone else at his office. He resigned to silenc and felt wholly alien. Now even the lunch hour, the solitary bastion of work-week relief, had been spoiled.

Ryan spied a young woman in a pencil skirt getting up to discard her trash. They connected gazes while she tipped her tray. He smiled the half-smile he presumed women found charming. She blinked and Ryan faced forward in disgust.

Josh had watched the scene play out. It occurred to him there was nothing keeping him tethered to this oaf. He could leave without any predictable negative consequences. Ryan likely would refrain from mentioning it later in order not to concede his pride had been damaged. In the short-run, interactions may be cold. In the long run, they probably would diminish. "I'm going to go," Josh muttered. Ryan turned to see him depart, said nothing, and began counting the money in his wallet.

As Josh was exiting, a group of suits were entering. He slid past them and merged onto the familiar sidewalk. Instinctively he headed towards his office building and began to consider his options.

Where to now? Not hungry. Still have...fourteen minutes. The bank's courtyard again? Might as well.

The courtyard was one of the city's secrets. Josh inadvertantly discovered it on one of his early expeditionary missions. Heading north on Broadway from his office, the pattern was: building, street, building, alley, building, building, trees and fountain, street, etc. Dropped in the midst of aging steel and glass structures was a dollop of soil and greenery. Presumably designed for the bank's employees, the public was granted access during normal lunch hours.

To whittle the meaning of life down to four basic actions...that was tempting. But there's more than that. Ryan was way off. Simplifying is good, but not reducing. Simplifying leaves be what matters. Life cannot be reduced to a few physical requirements because those don't matter enough. I'd trade a full stomach for a full heart. And still, I feel empty all over. I am empty.

Upon arrival, Josh fumbled with the latch on the wrought-iron gate. As he had the previous two times he stopped by, he hesitated for a moment. Push or pull? Josh wanted to pull, but felt anxious about making the same mistake for the third time. He bucked his intuition and opted to push. The gate did not move. Josh looked up to see if the woman on a bench eating a sandwhich noticed his fumbling. Thankfully, she had not. He pulled and the gate squeaked. The woman continued chewing, unabated. He estimated he could sit for five minutes before needing to return. Josh selected the same molded concrete chair in the shade he had on his first visit.

I have always done what I was supposed to do--leapt through every hoop raised near me--and this is what I wound up with! My job is dehumanizing. It is a worthless way to pass my time. I am swapping half of my waking life for a paltry hourly wage. I'm practically getting paid to waste away.

The maintenance of the courtyard had been neglected. The bleached mulch was speckled with weeds. The tan husks of last year's annuals hunched in evenly-spaced piles along the building's facade. Rusty water gathered in a pool at the bottom of the fountain. Only the garden's ginko trees retained their vitality. In waves, they swayed with the breeze. Josh looked through the branches as he pondered.

Why am I so upset? I shouldn't be. Ryan was partially right. What can I do? Nearly everybody has a less-than-grand job. That's the breaks. You can't hire yourself. Employers aren't concerned with the satisfaction possible within positions they create. They want efficiency and efficiency goes up as thinking goes down. Thinking takes time and time is money. That invisible hand punches most of us in the gut. Has it always been that way? What did people used to do? Most of them farmed. What if I were a farmer a few generations back? I bet an old farmer never despaired. All that sweat and toil and so little control over the end result--that required resilience. Maybe your fields produce so much it rots. Maybe it doesn't rain and all that work goes for nothing. They were kept from daydreaming by their dependence upon nature. They knew their vulnerability from the start. I spent an awful lot of my days dreaming of an important career. That's the culprit for all of this disappointment: the proposition that one's worth comes from what one does. One's subsistence, sure. But worth? Couldn't be.

Josh interrupted himself to consult his watch. It was time to go. He stood up, tucked in his shirt, and went to the gate. He felt relieved as it swung open with the push of his hand. The one o'clock sun soaked the back of his navy blazer and for a moment Josh was happy. It may not be clean air, but it's moving. That's good enough. Soon, he was draped with the shadow of his building.

Josh tried to reassure himself once his feet were on the maroon carpet again. I need to stop expecting too much from my job. This is something I just have to endure. The up arrow flashed by one elevator; he waited infront of it. The doors slid open and an empty space invited Josh to join. Moments later, his shoulders dropped from the ascent.

The office receptionist did not raise her head when Josh came through the doors. He turned and traveled down a bank of cubicles and through a cloud of hushed rhythmic tapping until he reached his own pocket of space.

Josh's desk was distinguished by its unusually tidy appearance. There were no personal accoutrements save for the stark-white coffee mug with a brown stain from where he drank. He spun his chair around and slunk into his seat. He flexed his fingers, stretched his wrists, and blinked his eyes. He was ready to work.