The Meaning of Life
Friday, January 20th, 2012In the original The Twilight Zone television series, there was an episode that periodically comes to mind and haunts me to this day. (It really doesn’t haunt me; it’s just fun to think about)…(okay, it haunts me a little)…(HELLLLLP!).
It had to do with a small-town resident apparently possessing the meaning of life. Whenever he’d whisper this “truth” to someone, the listener would go insane. By episode’s end, half the town’s residents were out of their minds, not being able to cope with this new information.
So, the question I’ve always asked myself is, “what could be so frightening about the meaning of life that it would cause everyone to go totally crazy?”
I’ve still never been able to figure that out.
So, I’ll ask you: is there an answer to this question? Not the meaning of life (though, feel free to share your opinion of that, as well, if you’d like) but rather, what could be so scary that knowing it could cause us to lose our minds?
Instead of my responding to each answer, I’m going to just sit back and enjoy, if you don’t mind. Though, I’ll do so without the pepperoni pizza that I used to eat whenever I watched “The Zone.”
Oh, one more thing. Get this, get this; I know this episode aired during the original series, not the 1985 revised series. I remember the black and white setting. And, I remember watching it in college back in 1980. Yes, I remember it as though I were watching it yesterday. Yet, when I tried to search for it on the site of the original series, I could not find it. I could only find it as part of the new series, the episode entitled, “The Need to Know.”
But, I absolutely, without question, remember it. I remember it clearly as can be. I KNOW I do. What is happening? What’s going on? How can I not…
{Narrator: A middle-aged man with graying hair and a slightly expanding girth cannot fathom why his memory, which he thinks of as a steel trap, is possibly failing him. Or, rather is it the world that is failing his memory? He begins to lose his mind as he cannot deal with not being able to place that which he is sure happened. Or, did it happen? That is the quandary he faces as he wanders cyberspace and finds himself suddenly trapped in…The Twilight Zone.}







