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"Sir, I am certain you'd imagine the
$499.99 is an extravagant cost for three years of guaranteed
performance for your television, but think about it from the TV's perspective.
We will only replace one bulb, sure, but this is the light we are talking about.
To you it is the brightness and the motion but to it, it is the radiance emitted
from the energy of the world. When you die, you might be prayed for. You
might comfort yourself now, wondering what the weight of your
spirit rises towards as you slow your breath. But do you know the
light inside of you, the part of you that you know illuminates all others you
have touched, the brilliance you draw from the brilliance of all others whom
also draw their brilliance from you, do you know what it would mean to you, that
your light can be as bright as it were as a child, before the color wheels got
dusty and the pixels burnt out and the picture got darker and blurrier until one
day everyone you've loved has turned to you and said, 'I cannot see
the world through you anymore, you are faded, nearly black and white, and there
are holes everywhere in this world I have with you, you have not lasted as long
as you had hoped when you set out with me, and now we must part
ways?'
Like me, the TV doesn't believe in God,
doesn't hold value in faith or prayers of resurrection. But a contract
is a model for our faith, it's our spiritual architecture, it is my
word and your word and together we are declaring that the world will hold a
certain order, that together we can solve our doubts, so long as we are honest
and stand behind the words we use to signify that honesty in what we tell
one another. So long as we do not do intentional harm to the item we're
protecting. If we will not pour liquids into the cracks, if we will not drop or
abandon each other for cosmetic damage, then you and I are agreeing on a world,
on a set of rules that ensures that we will be here for one
another..."
Just then a child distracts us, one of the
customers children is crying, having stumbled over a remote control
tied to a 42" LCD. The man runs over, shaking his head, comes back. He was
uncomfortable about the money. So was I. I don't want to sell anything, but the
way they look at me when I explain it is of distrust and fear, and I want to
take them by the hand and tell them, "You are okay. Everything is going to be
okay." As he comforts his child I am exhausted by the doubts I have with
any of my own talk. Is my desire to comfort becoming a form of extortion?
Because I benefit, and when I reap a reward I distrust my own
sincerity. I don't want to coerce anyone into decisions that result in my
benefit, but even to state your desired outcome is a form of coercion if you
believe anyone loves you at all, or that anyone is capable of sacrifice. When he
says sure, if you really think so, holding his child on his arm as the
child stops crying, I shake my head no. It is a lot of money, and the cost of
bulbs will come down in a few years, I am certain of it, and while I think
I would do it myself, I would not spend $2800 on a television only to add
another $500 to protect it.
"I understand your business, and our
interactions, are valuable, but this is a luxury item, I wouldn't buy the plan
because I wouldn't buy the TV, a TV for what? To watch the suffering
in greater clarity? I mean, when we were looking at the TV, not you sir,
it's not you, it was another guy, we looked at one of those kids in Rwanda or
Somalia or my god, I don't even know what country, what difference does it make,
we watched a starving human being and he asked me which would look
better with his DVD player. Don't buy the service and don't buy the
television. Spend the money to say something, maybe you won't cure disease
or feed a child but do something that says you are alive, rent a hall and
hold a talk on something you are passionate about, do
something living and eccentric and yours, something that is you and only
you and not the TV. I can't sell it to you now, not now. Before we made a
commitment, maybe, but not now and never again. I'm sorry." I walk to the
breakroom. I don't know where my customer is.
My manager asks me later why the customer changed
his mind, and I tell him the television was too
expensive.
-e.
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