“Actually, this is all I had to do tonight, and I’m done,” Jacob fibbed. He had no desire to head back to his room and try to explain his entire history of crime in one brief paragraph to hand over to his future employers. “I’m all yours.”
Pursing her lips, she considered his offer. A long enough moment passed that he thought she might reject his help, sending him back to his room to meet his fate with no more excuses. But after a minute of consideration, she asked, “How are you at philosophy?”
PROFESSOR SHAEFER DRONED ON about microorganisms, and Jacob’s eyelids fluttered shut for the twentieth time that hour. He had a long night with Jenna in the library the night before, and when his eyes weren’t drifting closed in class, he was busying his lethargic mind musing over their debate the previous evening to keep himself awake.
At some point in the night, they had migrated from the quiet study area to the group study area, where tables and chairs were replaced with couches and bean-bags and people were free to discuss projects above a whisper.
Jenna was trying to drudge through the heavy content of her philosophy class’ required reading, and in the midst of working through the symbolism of the story, they landed on the topic of free will.
Jenna was of the mind that humans have free will, but Jacob had never been convinced of that theory.
“I mean, I understand that it seems like we have free will,” he conceded as the debate carried on. “But I can’t separate my decisions from who I am as a person. And who I am as a person has been shaped by all kinds of different factors that were outside of my control.”
Jenna opened her mouth to object, but he held up a hand.
“Think about this,” he continued. “Let’s say a kid grows up with… I don’t know, really racist parents, or something. If he grows up to commit a hate crime, was that really done completely under his free will? I mean, sure, he chose to do whatever he did, but that choice was influenced by his parents and the way he was raised, which is outside of his own will.”
She pursed her lips. “Okay. But then, what about personal responsibility?” she asked. “If we accept that free will doesn’t exist at all, then how could we ever justify putting someone in prison?”
The mention of prison threw Jacob’s train of thought off its track.
“What do you mean?” he asked, if only to make her talk while he re-gathered his thoughts.
“I mean, if every decision we make is shaped by factors outside of our control, then what do we do with the man who commits the hate crime?” she asks, speaking more exuberantly now that he was flustered enough to let her get a word in. “How can we say he’s responsible for his actions? How can we put him in jail?”
Jacob’s mind swirled, trying to think of a rebuttal, but he came up blank. “I guess we wouldn’t,” he admitted.
“But we do. All the time,” Jenna replied, fired up by his lame retort. “So, clearly, we all instinctively believe that people are responsible for their own actions. Ergo, free will exists.” She punctuated her sentence with a triumphant smirk.
“But…,” Jacob trailed off as the rebuttal came to him, unsure if he wanted to lead the conversation that direction. His mind warred between his desire to stay as far from the subject as possible and the desire to win the debate. In the end, his competitive nature won out. “But what about people who have mental disorders?”
Jenna’s confidence visibly wavered.
“Or people who were abused or have PTSD, or whatever,” he shrugged, trying to keep the subject hypothetical. Sometimes when they break the law, they don’t go to jail. They go to a mental facility instead. Do those people have free will? And if they do, then why not send them to prison?”
He could see the wheels turning in Jenna’s mind as she chewed on her lip, her victorious grin fading into pursed lips.
“Ugh, this class makes my brain hurt,” she whined, shutting the book and tossing it aside. “I’m totally gonna fail. Let’s move on to something more concrete,” she said, picking up her World Civilizations textbook.
Jacob barely made it through his classes without crashing, but dinner gave him a small second wind. After the procrastination of the previous night, he decided to man up and use his extra burst of energy to tackle the rest of his job applications.
Two hours later, he found himself lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling for the millionth time and tapping his pen on his chest, applications littered all around him. The more he tried to articulate his past in words, the angrier he became at the question itself. He sat up, picked up one of the papers beside him and stared at the culprit.
Have you ever been convicted of a felony? If yes, please explain.
Then he stared at the measly two blank lines after the question, as if that would even begin to scratch the surface. He had already written out draft after draft of his explanation, tossing each one when it stretched longer than a paragraph. He wondered if it would send a better or worse message if he continued onto the back of the application. Or maybe he could staple on another few pages.
And why should he have to answer the question, anyway? It’s not like it would affect his job performance. It’s not as if flipping burgers or folding clothes is complicated enough to require the most sane and sober-minded employees for the task. And besides, he was sober-minded. There was even an argument to be made for his sanity, at that point.
It wasn’t fair. How could he ever be expected to explain a lifetime of abuse and trauma in two little lines? With his frustration reaching an all-time high, he gathered up all of the papers, slipped on his shoes, grabbed his wallet and keys and walked out the door.
If two lines was all he was going to get, then they weren’t going to get anything. Something in the back of his mind told him it was a stupid decision, but he was too exhausted to care. He was leaving the question blank again, and that was that.
He decided to return the applications right away, before he could stress over the decision and change his mind, dooming him to another evening living in the past, wrestling with every memory of the man he used to be and making himself sick over the idea of anyone seeing that side of him now.
There was a part of him that thought that if he checked the “yes” box and left the explanation blank, they would assume the worst. But another, more somber part of him reminded himself that whatever they would assume couldn’t possibly be worse than the truth.
By the time he rolled into bed that night, it was well after midnight. Due to his series of snap decisions, he didn’t plan his course well enough to drop off the restaurant applications before they closed, so he still had a few left to return. When he got back to his dorm, he shoved them into his desk drawer, out of sight and soon-to-be out of mind.
It took a long time for his mind to settle enough for sleep, even with the help of his medication. Every time the subject of his past came up, it was like opening the floodgates. He wanted to leave everything in New York behind him, but he was beginning to realize that wasn’t going to be as easy as he once thought. No matter how much he changed, what kind of a person he was now, his past was still his. He wasn’t a new man. He was the same man, living a new life, and no amount of running or hiding was going to change that.