The Jumper

           He took the elevator to the very top story of the large skyscraper that loomed over the city. He had always admired that one building, with its thousand eyes that seemed to watch over the city. Those eyes that saw everything saw him and every moment of his life. That is why it had to be this building.

In the elevator he prayed that since the building had always judged him, judged his life, that maybe God would take pity and not judge him so harshly. He wanted God to perhaps take pity on him. He had been judged enough by every steel building he entered, every soulless person with cold eyes that he had to interact with, everyone and everything. So maybe God would be different.

When the elevator reached the top floor the man found the door that was marked “Roof Access. Authorized Personal Only”. He didn’t know if an alarm would sound as he opened the door, and for once he didn’t care. He had never been a brave man. Every do not enter sign, every stop sign, every speed limit, every rule he had ever encountered in his life he obeyed. He didn’t question any of them. Because he was terrified at the idea of suffering consequences, he had suffered enough.

He opened the door at the top of the roof and let the sunshine hit him. He stood there for a moment with his arm outstretched and his head tilted toward the sky and let the warmth surround him and embrace him. Up here there were no people pushing you out of the way. No concrete labyrinth to navigate from one place to the next, nothing to distract from the glory of the bright blue sky.

“This is the day”, he thought. It was on this spring day that he would take charge. All decisions had been made that needed to be made. Everything was in order. And it was here, on this roof, on top of this building that he would decide the future. He would no longer just be a victim of fate. His life had been planned for him by a controlling father before he was even out of his mother’s womb. He went to the schools he was supposed to go to. He studied the subjects he was supposed to study. He married the woman he was supposed to marry. His life read more like a spreadsheet than anything else.

The job his father insisted that he take went bankrupt soon after the crash. Then his father blamed him for not working hard enough to keep it from happening. Only his father could find a way to blame the recession on him.

His wife was the girl next door. Their marriage was more like an arranged marriage than anything else. In the end she was not cut out to be the wife of a poor man so she left. He felt as though he had no control over his life, but he could at least control his death. 

He took one long deep breath and took in the majesty of the sky above one last time. He walk to the ledge, climbed on top, closed his eyes and let his body free fall. It took only moments before his body hit the street below, distorted and mangled. In just a blink of a passersby’s eyes it was over. Physics gives us an equation of how long it would take for a man to hit the earth below, but the soul has a very different perception of time.

A life that could have been his flashed before his eye. He thought of the beautiful girl he had met in college and had a brief love affair with. He remembered having snowball fights with her in the snow, talks over coffee about the meaning of life. She was the love of his life, and he left her in the snow crying as he explained that he was promised to another.

But the life that was going through his mind did not end with her that night. He proposed that night instead of ending it. His parents were furious for choosing the bohemian free-spirit over the conservative daughter of a business partner. He changed his major from Economics to Art History and became a professor. She was a freelance photographer. They were not rich and lived pay check to pay check, but they made it work.

He had two sons with her. After the second son was born they moved to a two bedroom house instead of the studio apartment they had been living in. Everything was not perfect. They had their share of disagreements, mainly about money, but they made it through. He taught his sons to never say the words “I can’t”. She taught them to always question everything. Even them if they felt that they were wrong. She taught them to think for themselves and to go after whatever they wanted. He taught them that money does not equal happiness. When they were older he taught them how he left a life of privilege because of the love he had for their mother, and it was the best decision of his life. They left the nest and all that was left of their home was two wrinkled and gray haired people who still held each other’s hands whenever they were walking, and who loved each other more now than on that day in the snow.

He saw his life as it could have been, not what it was. When the impact of the hard concrete below hit, he was smiling.