The Conveyor Belt: A Humanistic Portrayal of (After)life

You’re standing in an empty room. It’s a room that was built just for you. It’s just long enough so that you cannot see to the end. Had you better vision, the room would be a little longer. Had you worse vision, the room would a bit shorter. Whoever you are, you can’t see to the end, follow? For all you know, the room extends to infinity, but it doesn’t. It only extends just far enough that you cannot see the end, in both directions. Of course, I cannot prove this to you, because your feet are set in concrete and you cannot walk to the end of the room to see for yourself. Of course, I could walk to the end of the room and point it out to you, but I’d be too far away for you to see, so that would be silly. You’ll just have to take my word for it. The room is not square; it’s a rectangle. It’s far less wide than it is long, though. In fact, were you to lie on your side and extend your arms as far as they reach, the tips of your toes would touch one wall and your fingernails would come into contact with the other wall. Just go with it. Oh, and as you suspected, the room extends to infinity upwards. What you don’t know is that at the very top is a retractable domed roof. Sometimes the roof is closed due to inclement weather. At other times, you get wet.

Ok. So you’re in the room. Also in the room with you is a conveyor belt. It’s always on. This is your life. Everything you encounter each day is placed on this conveyor belt. Everything. Your friends. Your car. Your apartment. The sun. The waiter in the restaurant where you had lunch. Your dog. The wind. Everything. Also on the conveyor belt is everything that you don’t actually encounter but you think about. So, the song you can’t get out of your head. Your dad. The last girl you kissed. There is a slight difference between the two groups of things, though. If you actually encounter it, it’s really on the conveyor belt. If you just think about it, it’s not really on the conveyor belt, but it’s replaced with an artist’s rendition of the thing. He’s a really, really good artist though, so you can hardly tell the difference. You’d only notice the difference if you looked really closely, but life’s coming at your too fast to notice such detail.

But, here’s the trick. The conveyor belt slows down and speeds up based on how long you come into contact with the thing. So, if you think about something for a really long time, it will pass you very slowly on the conveyor belt. This is your chance to take a really good look to see if it’s an artist’s rendition or not! In other words, it’s when you get the conveyor belt to slow down that you really get to know something. Remember that.

Here’s the other thing. You will notice that sometimes you see the same thing very often, your roommate for instance. You might think that your roommate gets to the end of the conveyor belt, slips through some underground passage back to the front, and passes you again. But this isn’t how it happens. It wouldn’t be a very efficient use of his time, what with all the walking and waiting in line he’d have to do. Instead, there are several versions of each thing. That is, every time something passes you on the belt, it’s doing so for the first time. So, on Monday, when you’re passed by your roommate, it’s roommate, version number 1. Then on Tuesday, it’s another version all together. There are lots of versions of things. At least for those things you often come into contact with. But for most everything, there’s only one version and you only see it once.

You’ve often wondered what happens to things after they pass you. Technically, I’m not supposed to tell you, but I think I’ve already told you too much, so what the heck? At the end of the conveyor belt is a big pile of stuff. It’s everything you’ve ever seen. The longer you live, the bigger it is. Picture how big this pile would be. Let’s say you see your mom 150,000 times in your life. There are 150,000 moms in the pile. And let’s say you were stuck in traffic for a few hours and were passed by 30,000 cars going in the other direction. They’re all in the pile, too. Every time you went outside, that’s one more sun or moon in the pile. For every time you went camping in the wilderness, that’s one million more stars in the pile! Very big pile. The more you live, the bigger the pile.

Eventually, the conveyor belt with stop. At this point, you’ll get thrown into the pile. Here’s the funny thing. In this huge, seemingly infinite pile of your life, there’s only one version of you. Everyone will remain in their pile for the rest of eternity.

Knowing this, you’d be wise to employ some strategy while you can. That is, try to see the people you’d want to spend the rest of eternity with often. If you can’t see them in actuality, at least think of them, because a replica is better than nothing. You do, after all, have a lot of time to spend. You’ll want lots of them in the pile with you. If there are only a few, they’ll be hard to find. Also, try not to think of negative things – murder, revenge, thievery, deceit – because the shadows of these thoughts will haunt you. I encourage everyone to go to Hawaii at least once, so that you can add that to your pile. Add some flowers. Some good books. Oh, and add lots of things that smell good. The way your pile smells would prove very important. Add some live music and a joke or two.

Ultimately, it would be nice to have one of everything, you know, just in case.