Single Serve

By Chester Holden

The width of America’s most-watched screens gradually grew until suddenly scaling down to fit within children’s hands and pockets. Around that same time, the numerous centuries of canoes floating down its rivers and streams quickly lost favor to kayaks. And today, in 2022, its trend of shrinking average household size shows no sign of slowing. In essence, America’s relatively free market has recently proven that, when presented with a choice, all but a fraction of its citizens prefer the loneliness of individualized experience to the inconvenience of communal experience. 

I was driving alone to a family reunion I really dreaded attending, pondering this particular societal change sweeping across my homeland with the inevitable momentum of an avalanche. It depressed me enormously. Having twice suffered the consequences of falling in love, I understood that maintaining such relationships is in no way conducive to free living. So, of course, at the bottom of everything, what bothered me was whether or not love was worth forsaking for freedom. 

In my experience, incessantly questioning a life without apparent answers leads to wasting too much of it in anxious indecision. And while I admire modern science's practical approach and rapid progress, I still feel it has done little more for humanity than reducing certain kinds of suffering and delaying certain people’s death. It only takes briefly considering a reality in which science has advanced until ending all death and suffering to understand that it is not worth pursuing. I cannot imagine never being compelled to act because I had no wants or needs. And I do not want to imagine being trapped in such an uneventful state for all eternity.

Less than a mile from my destination, the beginning of Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus abruptly entered my mind, and I decided no truer sentence had ever been written. I struggled to identify anything more tiresome to appreciate than life. And yet, although a successful suicide has never been easier accomplished, the overwhelming majority of anyone ever to inhale earthly air never moves past the mere fantasizing or planning of it. 

Still wondering if life was worth living, I turned into my grandma’s front yard, which was momentarily functioning as a crowded family parking lot. But instead of getting out and approaching the party, I silently remained in motionless thought, desperate for even a slightly worthwhile reason or compelling excuse for existing to occur to me. I lingered in this uncertain condition until the afternoon summer sun heated my car beyond what I believed bearable. 

Finally, I stepped outside and went around my grandma’s house and into her large backyard, discovering most of my family occupied with an irrationally competitive game of volleyball. I cynically shook my head and sat at a nearby empty table before browsing through various apps on my phone. Then, after nearly ten minutes of no critical thinking, I overheard my brother announcing the score of the volleyball game and realized his team was one point away from victory. So, figuring someone’s ego would likely soon be wounded sufficiently enough to inspire actual entertainment, I shifted my entire attention to their game.

Nevertheless, the winning score was quite undramatically earned when my brother’s serve sailed barely over the net and bounced scarcely before the opposite court’s back boundary line. The volleyball continued rapidly rolling, but no member of the losing team pursued it, so I arose with spiteful superiority, intending to retrieve it myself. However, before moving forward, I heard happy giggling, turned immediately toward it, and noticed my grinning three-year-old niece running after the white ball as if there was nothing else she would rather be doing. And at that instant, her fearlessly quick and clumsy steps seemed to answer for everything.

Chester Holden is a writer from Cambridge Springs, Pennsylvania, living in Hanoi, Vietnam. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Door is a Jar, Across the Margin, The Bear Creek Gazette, Misery Tourism, Versification, The Helix, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Lit Camp, Primeval Monster, Alien Buddha, and others. Find him on Twitter @ChesterHolden9.