Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio.
This is: [Creative Writing Contest] The Reset Button, published by Joshua Ingle on the effective altruism forum.
You never thought you’d use the reset button until the day you did.
The button, an old family heirloom gifted by your parents on your eighteenth birthday, sat at the bottom of a box in your closet for most of your twenties. While you were laser-focused on maxing out your college grades and interning at company after company until you finally landed a good job, then sating a bit of your lifelong wanderlust with well-deserved world travels, the reset button lingered, half forgotten.
Yes, you made youthful mistakes. From time to time, you considered digging the button out and using it. But whenever the temptation struck, your reasoning always came back to this: What could possibly be important enough to justify the button’s use? Your parents had stressed it could only be used once, and no bungled speech or embarrassing date or wasted funds ever seemed worth it. Their parents and even their grandparents had stewarded the button so they could pass it down the family line, so how astonishingly selfish would you be to use it on yourself? No, you’ll pass it down to your kids, and they to their kids, until it can be used for something truly important.
Or so you tell yourself.
Later in life, you’re comfortable enough that you haven’t thought about the reset button in years. You’re mid-career, in a secure position at a prestigious company, with a new house and only a little debt. Due to some guest posts you’ve written on a popular blog, your name is known and respected in your field. Once or twice each year, you and your partner hop over to a resort town for a week of romance and adventure. You donate a bit to some favorite charities as well. You have the usual worries, but overall, life is good.
At breakfast today, your partner reminds you to make a digital copy of the kids’ birth certificates so you can submit their passport applications, and when you open your small safe to grab the certificates, you notice the reset button in the far corner, encased in its simple steel container beneath some insurance documents. You’d forgotten you moved it there when you cleaned out your college boxes last winter.
How does that damn button work? You’ve wondered this before, but you never had the resources to figure it out. If Frieda and Colin in the R&D Department open it up and look inside, you bet they’ll be able to tell you, and maybe even get some inspiration for company products.
On a whim, you pocket the reset button and take it to work.
You spend an hour at the gym, then curse a traffic jam on the freeway that’ll make you twenty minutes late. Worries gnaw at you while you wait. Are your kids getting a good education? Will the deal you’re negotiating at work go through? Can you find enough time to rest and fend off exhaustion? You try to distract yourself with the radio, but half the channels have hosts chattering about world news. Some new crisis in international politics. Such intrigue used to interest you, but you’re not in the mood for it now, so you keep switching channels until you find calming music.
Your boss passes you in the hallway and asks if you’ve finished writing the big contract yet. You tell her you’ll get it to her by noon. You exchange pointers with Malik on your workout routines over coffee in the break room. He mentions he heard a rumor you’re being eyed for a position that just opened in upper-level management but says you didn’t hear it from him. Beaming, you walk to your office, open your desktop, and notice you only have five minutes until today’s operations meeting. So you stride past cubicles to Kendal’s desk and ask her to generate six of the relevant reports. You check the time as you wait for them to print, then offer her generous thanks as she hands t...
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