Rami Ungar The Writer

The other night, I was reading the final volume of the manga Alice in Borderland. If you haven’t read the original manga or seen the kickass live-action adaptation on Netflix, the story follows a teenager who finds himself among several people randomly placed in a Tokyo emptied of people. Even stranger, the people left in Tokyo have to take place in life-or-death games. If they win the games, they’ll get to live a bit longer. If they lose, they die. And if they don’t survive the games, a laser will come out of the sky and kill them.

Yeah, pretty dark stuff. Makes for a great sci-fi thriller.

Anyway, without spoiling the end of the manga or the TV series, the last chapter features a reporter asking random people on the street why they’re alive. Seems like a random way to end a rollercoaster of a manga, until you realize the death games the characters deal with takes a toll on them psychologically, to the point that some of them even wonder if it’s worth trying to live.

The answers the reporter gets are all over the place. A few aren’t interested in answering and make sure the reporter knows it. A few more don’t know and have never thought about it. Several give variations on “So I can die without regrets” or “I do it because there’s someone important in my life.” Some answers are shallow, like the weekend beer or for material things. Others are about how happy they are everyday or pursuing what they love.

One woman thinks it’s to find out why we’re here, while two others think it’s because of biology.

One little girl in Gothic Lolita dress says she’s living and putting herself in misery everyday for revenge against her parents.*

One man says it’s because this life is all there is.

A couple, for one reason or another, are just going through the motions until they die.

Reading the chapter, I realized something; none of us really know why we’re alive. Not what the meaning of life is; that related, but I feel like that’s a question revolving around the general population and not the individual.

But seriously, why are we alive? Was each one of us placed on this planet for a purpose? Is it just because of biological drives for survival? The need to reproduce and pass on our DNA to a new generation? Is it something we need to figure out for ourselves? Or is it just because we’re already alive, so might as well keep living?

Or perhaps it’s not something we should not think too much about. Perhaps instead we should live.

It’s something I’ve been thinking about since I read that chapter. I know my purpose in life, the purpose I set for myself: live a good life, write some damn good horror stories, and try to leave this world a bit better than I found it. And I have an opinion on what the meaning of life is (no, it’s not 42). But are those the same answers to this question?

Maybe. Or maybe not. Like I said, I don’t get up every day thinking, “I’m getting up and I’m alive to write scary stories and have a good life and improve the world.”

Hmm…but I do get up every morning because I have dreams I want to pursue. A lot of what I do everyday is because I want to achieve those dreams. So maybe’s that’s why I’m alive.

But in the end, I don’t know if I need to think about it that hard. It never was something I needed to think that hard about before, after all. Why should that change going forward?

In any event, I’ll keep going forward. I’ll keep pursuing those dreams and hopefully improving my life and the lives of others while I’m at it. And maybe, if a reporter asks me, “Why are you alive?”, I’ll have a decent answer.

How would you answer that reporter’s question? What do you think of this topic? Was this too heavy a subject for a blog post?

*And I’m probably going to write a story around that little girl, because that answer was just too dark and intriguing for me to just pass over. I want to write a story around her and find out what made her like that!

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Just a reminder, my Followers of Fear: this Saturday, April 6, I’ll be at the Wagnalls Library in Lithopolis, Ohio from 10 AM – 2 PM for their Local Author Fair. If you can, please stop by. I’ll be selling books, doing Tarot readings, and sitting on a panel. You can find out more on their website here. Hope to see you there!

Until next time, my Followers of Fear, good night, pleasant nightmares, and check out Alice in Borderland. Manga or TV show, it’s an awesome series. Just my two cents on the subject!