42,
by Leonor Henríquez

leer en español

      The question has been haunting me for weeks.

I hope these lines will help me exorcise it.

Let me explain.

My neighbor recently asked me if she could come and interview me, as part of a course she was taking. I said yes, of course.

The topics were really very interesting and generated a very good conversation, until we got to her last question:

-What is the meaning of life for you?

At that moment I was possessed by the spirit of my beloved husband and I instinctively said:

– The number 42, of course.

My interlocutor looked at me strangely. I had to apologize and explain.

It is a book, quintessentially British humour, which was among my husband’s favourites.

Perhaps many of you know it, it is called: “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, by Douglas Adams, which began as a radio comedy on the BBC in 1978 and was later adapted into a television series and even a film.

It is about the adventures of the only man who survives the destruction of the Earth, and as he wanders through space, he learns the truths of human existence.

In the plot, a computer called “Deep Thought” is appointed to answer the question: “What is the meaning of life, of the universe and of everything?”

After seven and a half million years of calculations, the answer was not long in coming: 42.

Mathematicians, Tibetan monks, scholars of Plato and Pythagoras tried to find explanations for this number, until Adams himself confessed that it occurred to him while he was writing in his garden, and it was a simple joke.

At the end of this long explanation, I think my neighbor doubted my mental health and repeated the question to me. I said to her:

-Can I call a friend?

We said goodbye amid polite and nervous laughter.

The interview was over.

I was left thinking about the complexity of the question.

In the end I couldn’t find a better answer than that of “Deep Thought”:

42… nothing else.

by the same author