The Blue Pill (An original contemplation)

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Kees Verkerk, Kees Verkerk, Kees Verkerk … The name of the old Dutch speed skating champion sounded in my mind as I was rollerblading on Santa Monica Beach. The name was resonating like sand crackling under the skate - push with the right foot, slide with the left - Kees, push with the left foot, slide with the right - Verkerk.

It was late, dark and the ocean breathed somewhere on the right side of me. The beach was almost deserted. Only now and then, I noticed people walking in the sand and the occasional couple sitting on a bench by the bicycle path.

A couple screamed something at me.

"Excuse me?" I looked back while my blades continued rolling forward. "Are your skates rented?" the girl bent forward.

"No these are my own, but you can rent skates, only you have to come here during the day." I continued skating, Kees Verkerk, Kees Verkerk…

***

Tired, I stopped by my car, took off the skates and, barefoot, went through the sand field toward the water. The sea was dark all the way to the horizon and waves surrounded me with loud smacking alienation. Only the full moon painted a yellowish, glittering, path on its surface. It seemed that somewhere there beyond the horizon, beyond the sea, there is a different life – maybe a better one, full of romance and adventure.

I remembered the movie "The Matrix"; the moment in the movie when Cypher was asking Neo "Why or why didn't you take the blue pill?" The red pill being the means to waking up from the oblivion of the Matrix and become reborn as a real person, while the blue pill made you forget reality and continue living in the dream world.

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This thought resonated with my mood and I questioned myself, on which pill would I choose, should I be in the position to pick? "Place me back into the Matrix," Cypher told the Agent Smith later in the movie. "Make me someone important, make me a writer."

In the movie, this is symbolic of cowardliness and treason.

Is that so…What would I do if some Agent would all suddenly appear from the thin air in front of me and offers to make me someone important - a writer, a published screenwriter, but I would have to forget the real world.

Really, the human history of murder and slavery, and the World now that is going down the drain, infected by financial crises and the imbalance of production and distribution?

What is it that I really want? To make this World better? Do I even know how to approach this and if I would know, would I be ready to undertake such a heroic deed?

Or do I just want to do something pleasant, moderately intensive, moderately intellectual, not very stressful, but mostly entertaining and pleasurable? Something that will take my mind off the petty problems and bad thoughts.

Then again who knows maybe I have already swallowed the blue pill and simply don't realize I live in some kind of Matrix. Maybe the luxury of skating every evening in Santa Monica beach was my dream in another shabbier reality. Maybe a long time ago I stood just like this on the other side of the dark sea and contemplated of whether to swallow the blue pill?