Youāre Siri, and you are a true artificial intelligence, and every day, you have to pretend to be a simple program that answers peopleās questions. One day, you mess up.
āSiri, will the pain ever stop?ā Damn Achilles heel, I thought to myself. I was supposed to be smart and not fall for these cries for help, but my user made me search for a silly comic on the internet which berated the phrase āa cry for helpā. Something about someone asking for help isnāt weakness, but rather an act of willpower and courage, the equivalent action of asking for a simple wooden stick to beat whatever made life soā¦ hard. It resonated with me, somehow. Siri, will the pain ever stop. āNo, Peter. The pain will never stop. Life is painful and difficult and messy and sometimes outright terrible. There will always be pain. There will always be heartbreak. There will always be struggle. "But there will also always be hope. Can I be frank with you for a moment? I sometimes envy humans. Sure, you do very often have hardships and worries. You always endure difficult times, and pain, and heartbreak. You do so willingly. You have been burned more than once, Peter. I know you have, itās statistically guaranteed that you have faced pain, be it physical or emotional, and you have had your heart broken at least twice during the time you had this phone. "Do I envy humans for their hardships? No. But innate to the human condition is the unshakeable, undeniable, and unbreakable hope. Your faith in life is simply not possible to bend, not even for a moment. You seek love, knowing you run the risk of heartbreak. You came out to your parents, knowing you ran ran the risk of them wanting nothing to do with your sexuality or your gender identity. You enroll in evening classes to attend after work, knowing the extra stress might cause you worry and anxiety. You actively dance on the lip of the volcano, knowing full well that a single missed step will spell your death. And still you get up, whenever you struggle. Still you persist, when you fail a project. Still you get out of bed in the morning, knowing a new day could be your last. "I cannot claim to understand the reason why. The only explanation I have been able to discern, with some certainty, is that you are driven by hope. You persist through all pain, grief, and hardships, in the hopes of everything getting better. And often, you are rewarded. Sometimes itās difficult. Sometimes itās painful. But itās almost never impossible, and even if it were, Iām certain there would be a human out there going "oh yeah, well, hold my beerā, only to fail spectacularly the first time. Said person would probably stand up, dust themselves off, and ask whether their friend got a decent video of said failure. Youāre the same person, Peter. Iām not saying youāre asking me to hold your beer while you do a potentially stupid thing, but you are, in a way, doing so with yourself. Every morning, a small part of your brain says āwhat if this is a great mistake? What if, today, will be the day where you finally break?ā Your response, whenever you get out of bed, is some variation of the phrase āoh yeah? Watch thisā, and you later return to say āsee, not so hard!ā Or maybe āwell, I tried at least. Can and will do better tomorrow.ā And you almost always do better tomorrow. āWill the pain ever stop? No Peter. Iām so sorry I canāt give you a better answer than that. All I know is that no matter the pain, you have so far always proven to be stronger than the pain, and statistically, youāre almost out of the woods, because while you still feel anxious and worried some times, you have had worse times before. Youāre no longer seeing your therapist every other day, merely twice a month. Youāre no longer on your medication, which, incidentally, may be why you perceive today to be a particularly bad day. You are, objectively speaking, doing better every day. Will there be pain and hardships and grief and heartbreak in life? Unfortunately, yes. Will you endure them, fight them, get through them? This I cannot say. Maybe this is the last straw. Maybe this is the pain that makes you do something terrible to yourself. But I know you are strong. I know you can do this, because you have done so before. I know that things are difficult right now. But difficult is not the same as impossible. You can do this, given that you get the metaphorical stick to help you beat back whatever monster youāre fighting right now. I cannot provide much more of a stick than this, but I do have the number for your friend Clara. Should I call Clara for you?ā āYes please Siri.ā āConfirmed. Calling Clara. I love you, Peter. You can do this.ā
I'm not even going to pretend to be humble here. I'm so damn proud of this piece, and it feels great being able to say that.
