Harry's Morning.

There never was a truth as bleak as this one. Harry was convinced.

The truth that Harry had only just discovered—or, more specifically, had allowed himself to admit—was that there was no purpose to his life whatsoever. And further, Harry reasoned, no purpose to life on earth in general, nor on any other earth that might be.

Harry left his shared apartment at 8:46 AM, keys clicking together lightly in his hand as he locked the door behind him. He could carry these thoughts with him to work, with plenty of time to weigh them out on the road during his long commute. Harry had begun to realize that his life was saturated with small-talk and tv-shows and alcohol. If it had been any other way, Harry reasoned, then this terrible truth would stood and bared itself to him sooner.

The first thought that came to Harry after he buckled himself into the car and got on his way down the road was that he surely wasn't the first person to have come to this conclusion. Nearly everyone in every culture throughout time must have thought the very same thing at least once—he was sure of it. But something about Harry's past—everything that came before—had kept it clearly from the field of his thought. And something about now , this moment in his life, had made this truth not only apparent, but powerfully compelling. Maybe it was his job, the way that he had so fully become the cliched cog-in-the-machine, toiling lamely in a little gray cubicle. Maybe it was the final descent of adulthood, the deaths of all the lives he imagined for himself, the end of the romance he'd been having with his own future. A year or so ago, he began coping with it by talking to himself late at night, referring to himself in rather pejorative terms. It was comforting.

It was also a comfort to think that so many people had likely felt just the same way before, regardless of what had caused his sudden confrontation with this truth. People who were much more intelligent and resourceful than himself. That meant that there would be things like books and tapes and videos for people like him, for those looking to eke out of the world some morsel of purpose. There were religious people, too. But Harry decided that he would stay away from them.

Harry wasn't certain why, but he had the distinct feeling that the answer to what he was looking for—the key that would turn the way he felt, that would smooth this awful, grating thought—was inside of him. It would be some other small truth, something that would slip in between two incongruous wholes—his life before, and this awful, monolithic reality—and make a single, coherent picture.

He was also certain that this thought was not one that he could bat away with a gesture or a simple change of scenery. It was the kind of thing that, once discovered, could not be put away again. This truth was one that Harry would live with all of his life. It was something he came into the world with. It wasn't a burden that was laid on him by some other person. And for that reason, Harry didn't hate it. He didn't loathe it like he did his name (which had been given to him by his parents), or the social awkwardness engendered by years of bullying and imposed self-consciousness. This truth was inborn. He would spend the rest of his life making room for it, dressing it up with other thoughts and ideas. And maybe, one day, he'd reconcile it. He could could only hope.