He hands you a box with some leather attached.
"Tie this around your arm," he says.
He gives you another one.
"Put this one on your head," he says.
You feel the weight of the box on your head, the straps digging into your arms. Weird.
"Okay, now mumble these words in a language you don't speak," he says.
You look at this guy with clothes that make him look Amish and an accent that seems to have been mined from the dorkiest depths of Brooklyn. You shrug. Anything to get this man to leave you alone.
You mumble the words and even shake back and forth a bit to make it seem sincere. You have no clue what you're saying or why you're saying it. Whatever.
You finish. You take off the leather and boxes, carefully unwrapping them. Somehow, you have a feeling that this Man in Black wants you to treat them delicately.
You look up at him, and he's smiling. He says, "You just left the physical world. You ceased to exist. You united your mind with your heart. You turned a piece of the world from evil into good. You exposed a long-dormant part of yourself, a part that only a small percentage of the world possesses that has been crying out for you to tap into. You just reaffirmed the fact that you and everything else in this world, and beyond, are all one. You just touched infinity."
This man is clearly insane.
Part of you wants to laugh, part of you wants to run for your life. But mostly you just feel bad for him. You pat him on the back sympathetically and walk away, careful not to make any sudden movements.
As you move away from the Man in Black, you shake your head, envisioning him stuck in his little fantasy, doing a task for his entire life that makes absolutely no logical sense. Poor guy.
You turn around, and see the Man in Black wrapping the straps around another Dude's arms, repeating the unintelligible words he muttered to you just a minute ago. How did he convince someone else so quickly, you wonder? Who in their right mind would listen to the babbling of a guy garbed in a costume that seems right out of Fiddler on the Roof?
And for that matter, what convinced you?
This thought stops you in your tracks. What was it that made you agree to allow a strange man to wrap the hide of a dead animal around your body?
As you stare at the Dude mumbling the words and bobbing back and forth (it almost seems genuine!), the question wraps your mind into a pretzel. You look down at the crease marks left from the straps on your left arm. Again, the question hits you: Why?
You see the Dude stop bobbing his head. He removes the straps. The Man in Black shakes his hand and gives him the same exact smile you received just a moment earlier. The Dude walks away, and you notice a glimmer of complete confusion as he heads off.
And that's when it becomes clear: even the Dude didn't know why he was doing what he was doing. You, the Man in Black, the Dude, you all just... did it. For no reason. Without any logic, you dropped what you were doing that day and did something completely absurd.
You, the Dude, the Man in Black. You're all insane.
And somehow, that makes total sense.
