THE WORLD YOU DON'T REMEMBER
The World You Don't Remember
I spent fourteen years following one question I thought I had already answered. This book begins with death, then moves through consciousness, God, Christianity, Jesus, Islam, doubt, and the problem of certainty.
You do not have to agree with where I ended. You only have to be willing to examine what you think you know.
Format and delivery+
Digital eBook. No shipping. Your download is delivered after checkout once the digital delivery app is connected.
What kind of book is this?+
A first-person philosophical narrative that begins with a death and follows one question through consciousness, God, Christianity, Jesus, Islam, doubt and certainty.
START AT THE NIGHT IT CHANGED
READ THE OPENING BEFORE YOU DECIDE.
Meet Daniel. Read the sentence I wish I had never said. Then decide whether the question is worth following.
READ THE OPENING FREE
CHAPTER ONE
The Last Ordinary Night
“You have plenty of time.”
I have repeated those words to myself so many times over the last fourteen years that I no longer know whether I remember saying them, or whether I remember remembering them.
There is a difference.
Memory becomes unreliable when you visit it too often. Every time you return to a moment, you touch it. Move something. Emphasize one detail and forget another. Eventually, you can become more certain about the story than you are about what actually happened.
But I know I said those words.
And I know Daniel heard them.
What I cannot remember is whether he smiled.
For years, I was certain he did. I could see it clearly: Daniel looking down into his paper cup, giving me that tired half-smile of his, as if I had just said something only a twenty-seven-year-old could say.
Now I'm not sure.
Maybe I've given him that smile because I needed his last moment with me to have one.
What I remember without effort is the coffee machine. It stood against the wall of the break room, between a vending machine that ate dollar bills and a bulletin board nobody read. The coffee cost a dollar twenty-five. Daniel complained about the price almost every night and then bought it anyway.
He said it tasted like someone had boiled cardboard.
I thought it tasted worse.
It was Tuesday, sometime in the fall. I could tell you the exact date if I went looking for it, but I don't want to. Dates make things look important after the fact. There had been nothing important about that Tuesday when we were living it.
That is what matters.
It was an ordinary Tuesday.
I remember the time, though.
9:47 p.m.
There was a cheap clock above the break-room door, and Daniel looked at it while we were talking. I followed his eyes without thinking. That is the only reason I know.
9:47.
Less than two hours later, he would be dead.
The rest of the chapter follows the ordinary night that made the sentence impossible to forget.
CONTINUE WITH THE BOOK →“You have plenty of time.”I said it less than two hours before Daniel died.
ONE LAST QUESTION
I THOUGHT I WAS ASKING WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE DIE.
I ENDED UP ASKING HOW WE SHOULD LIVE.
Maybe death is the end. Maybe it is not. But living as though the answer could never matter is still a choice.