Strings of Life
I just finished a book called The Measure by Nikki Erlick and it’s about a world where everyone’s lives are measured by a string they receive mysteriously overnight. It got me thinking about how I would react to something like this happening. How would I react if my husband had a short vs long string? How would I react to any of my friends’ or family’s string lengths? Would it even really matter?
The first person I really thought of was my husband. A little background on him, he’s diabetic. A little background on me, my mind has a bad habit of jumping to the worst-case scenario and thinking that the worst is going to happen. So right of the bat if he had a short string, I would assume that something related to his diabetes would end his life early. This would spell absolute chaos for me, as it would make my anxiety spike as he got to the end of his string. I think it would end up okay in the end though and bring us together. We would do more together and try to make the time we had left together count. On the flip side, if he had a long string it would make my anxiety calm down. There are times that I wake up in the middle of the night and wait for him to breathe so I know he’s okay. If he had a long string, I would know he’d be alright. I’d like to think that the longer the strings we both have that the more things we would do together. We’d be able to plan longer vacations and make more memories together. We would do the same thing if he had a short string, but I think that would be more rushed more spontaneous.
I also thought about what it would mean for people with suicidal tendencies since so many of my friends have struggled with this in the past. I think those that had long strings might seek help if they weren’t already. Those with short strings might just end things or they might still try to seek help and make sure their short string was due to another reason rather than their own undoing. I think the strings could go either way for someone with harmful thoughts. The book does explore this a little bit, but it doesn’t really go into depth with it. Towards the beginning of the novel there’s a couple that jumps off a bridge together, one of them dies and the other survives. It was a sad point in the novel but the only other mention of it is when a couple of the characters are in the spot where the couple jumped. There was a sad air to it but then they slipped right past it and pushed forward with the novel. I would have been interested to see what else could have been done with this aspect of the novel. It might have put even more of a feeling of hope into the novel. It already has an uplifting ending, but I think if this idea was gone into a bit more that maybe it could help more people.
I don’t know what my reaction would be if I got a short or long string. I’d like to think that I would try to take advantage of whatever time I had left. I mean isn’t that what we’re all doing all the time? This idea just goes into what would possibly happen if we were all told how much longer we had. I know that I would definitely be a person to look in my box to see the string inside. Many people in the novel didn’t look at their strings and I don’t know if I would have the willpower not to look. In the end it wouldn’t matter how long or short a string was, what would matter is having my loved ones around me as often as possible and spending all the time I possibly can with each and every one of them.
The idea of knowing how long anyone has left in life is terrifying and almost calming at the same time. It would give all of us a push to spend more time with the people we love and do the things we might be scared to do or simply putting off. It would definitely cause some to get chaotic and do things they never would, like attacking someone or some place. But I think it would end up being okay in the end. More people wouldn’t look when they received their boxes in the mail. The world would go back to normal in a sense. The people that looked and saw how long their string was would live through it and live their life the way they want to live it. Something like this happening would teach us that we can come together even when the world is in chaos. We can stand together even in the darkest of times.
