If you haven’t already heard of it, The Egg is a short story by Andy Weir, best portrayed by Kurzgesagt animations. The story is a compact case of many philosophies explored through the blunt yet wholesome conversation between a god-like figure and a man that just died.
The Egg stems from an epiphany the author has after a fight with his aunt. According to slow.co, it originally came up because he was having an argument with his aunt. He thought her point of view was ridiculous. Later he figured if he had lived her life, her opinion would make perfect sense. This lead him to think of a life cycle in which we are the same soul living different lives, all at the same time.
“I wanted the reader to change their mindset (if only for a short time) and start imagining themselves really being the people they meet”
– Andy Weir
A few interesting concepts in the story that might stand out are,
- All religions are right in their own way
- Time is a man-made concept
- We are a microscopic part of something much larger
- All of humanity is one person
But the main highlight for me is this,
“Where are we going?”
“Nowhere in particular,” I said. “It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”
– The Egg by Andy Weir
This has to be my favorite line from the short story, which leads to the entire interpretation of it. A repetitive theme you might find when reading or watching is the ambiguity. All religions are right in their own way, but none completely right. There are higher states or beings of consciousness, but we wouldn’t be able to understand what it means to be them quite yet. There are answers, but the whole truth is beyond our current understanding. So we do not know for certain where we are going or what we are doing here in this thing called life, but we can make the time to be here for what we are experiencing right now, the paths we are walking on and the people we are walking with. This further relates to Weir’s main theory of the short story – if all humans are a just a different version of one, if you are me and i, you, then none of us know where we are going but we might as well keep each other company, in good graces and kindness, on our shared journey
