If one were the sum of one’s interactions,

Who was I but a series of cues,

A false believer of free will, an animated mannequin?

Such would I have been for the rest of my life,

Had the series of ruptures not led me there,

At the rift of my world.

The pen feels weighty in my hands.

I cling to it tightly,

As if my memories depended on it.

Recollections flood me with the ferocity of a dam broke loose

As I recall the long suppressed past.

Seahaven Island,

My reality, the reality, shattered

When the boat sank its teeth into the flesh of my world:

The aspiring explorer’s first discovery,

Not of the existence of a new land,

But of the nonexistence of an old one.

Step.

Marlon, Meryl, Lauren,

I’d known them all my life,

Yet I have not the slightest intimation

That I know them at all.

Their idiosyncrasies, their age, or even their names.

Memories surge into mind, tainted 

By the realization 

That I shared them with millions of people.

Step, step. 

My fitful sleep still can’t escape the nightmares,

Truman, on his deathbed, his wife and his best friend by his side,

Saying, yes, they would be there for him, even in death.

As the last serene breath escapes the man,

The two hastily wipe away their tears, 

And clinically dispose of Truman’s body.

Step, step, step. 

I remember overlooking the seascape of my home at the top:

Cloudless skyline and serene ocean stretching ad infinitum.

Everything I’d ever known had sat right here,

A self-contained Eden shut out from the unknown,

Offering protection through ignorance.

I had lived as such for most of my life,

Withering in perpetual darkness,

Unknowingly binding myself the shackles of an imperfect perfection.

But I am his slave no longer.

I rather be vicerated by reality,

Than be anaesthetized in utopia.

There once was a daring astronaut,

Who manned a rocket all by himself

Into the mysterious fabric of spacetime.

Running from the false pretence his fellow inhabitants called “justice”.

With his fuel nearly depleted, his rations running low,

He crash landed on a foreign planet.

It was nothing like home,

Desolate wasteland stretching into all directions.

Despite that, the astronaut broke into a huge grin.

He would be the judge of his own ways. 

Ceremonially, he planted the flag down on the alien turf.

“I hereby proclaim this planet Trumania.”

“And in case I don’t see ya,

Good morning, good evening, and good night.”

1st entry (Age 12)

I saw the child for the first time today. When I stared into his eyes, a cold shiver ran down my spine: he lacked the life I’ve seen from all the other kids. Heck, from all the people I’ve met. My playmates and I were led into the basement by an adult, and we watched him behind a fence. Like watching animals in a zoo. He doesn’t deserve any of this, even if it means the rest of the town prospers because of it. Something has to be done. Tomorrow, I’ll get my friends, and we’ll do something about it together. Even if it means releasing him. 

55th entry (Age 13)

I’ve tried everything: Reasoned with the adults, rallied my peers, but everywhere I pry, I’m faced with locked doors behind which are people’s true feelings. Adults tell me that I’m too young to understand the importance of the child’s continued confinement; Friends go into a state of denial whenever I bring this up in front of them. No one, and I mean no one, is in solidarity with me. How can people still go about living their perfect lives, knowing the unspeakable suffering the child is going through? How can they not feel anger boil in their veins, seeing other people ignore the truth as if they’ve never known it, quietly benefitting from the child’s misery?

60th entry (Age 22)

The same old desk I’d sat in front of to write about the child since I was 12, but so much has changed. As I flip open this archaic diary and read from its stale pages, I’m flooded with emotions that I’d long forgotten. I’m 12 years old again, experiencing the shock, anger, and eventual despair that came with the realization of the child’s existence. 

But as authentic as those emotions might have seemed, they weren’t rational. I’ve come to realize that such emotions put our society in immense danger, which is why I now write to rebuke the ideas my young self so assiduously worshipped. 

The plainest reason is in sheer numbers. If the whole town’s happiness comes at the expense of a single person, then why do anything to alter it? A single person’s suffering, however great, does not come close to what might happen to Omelas if we were to save the child. So, if there is such thing as the “absolute quantity” of well being, then the most logical action is inaction, despite the child’s suffering. 

All this isn’t rocket science: The young me had known the importance of what was at stake perfectly well. This poses the question: Why would someone act against their rationale and be compelled to do something? I think that in its root, this has to do with a false sense of the ability to shift perspective. To elaborate, in trying to understand what the one person is going through, we overlook the perspectives of others. Think about the child: a sordid creature, imprisoned in a basement that never sees daylight. It’s all too easy to sympathize with a thing so vile, especially when our lives are filled with nothing but merriment. To put it bluntly, as pitiful as the child is, it’s but a cheap token of the imperfection of Omelas to some. These people are the ones who will stomp at the mere mention of the child and demand it be rescued or be put out of its misery. But we must ask ourselves: at what cost? That the people of Omelas will no longer live their happy lives is perhaps the most blatantly obvious yet confusingly obfuscated fact. It’s hard to think what life would be like for us without the child living in derelict conditions—all but the elders have no firsthand experience. As such, in sympathizing with the child, we fail to empathize with the townspeople. Their lives can descend into chaos; the children that lark naked in the streets can all be subject to the child’s condition. Is this worth freeing the child for? Of course not. But as a child, a turned a blind eye on the consequence, as I presume many do—how else can one justify such irrational thinking?

I understand that the idea of doing something blasphemous for the “greater good” is morally wrong. It’s often used as an excuse for beneficiaries to maintain their position, all at the expense of the well being of others. But does this stay true when “others” is one person, and the “beneficiaries” are the rest of Omelas? My own moral compass tells me that the greater good wins out. Not just because of the sheer number of us in Omelas, but also because I do not over exaggerate the mistreated child’s suffering and ignore the lives of the rest of town.