Will Kelly 
The legend of the 13th century Bohemian Prince, Bruncvik, his magical sword, and his trusty white lion sidekick has lived vicariously through the storytelling of Czech tour guides for hundreds of years now. The epic tells of a knight with a blustering confidence and passion for glory who sets out on a voyage across the Adriatic Sea accompanied by 30 mounted men under his wing. Unfortunately, this prided troop met their fated end after a hellacious storm left only Bruncvik alive.
He washed up on the rocky shore of the lost and infamous Amber Isle. With the help of a large two-tailed lion, he was nursed back to health by consuming healing herbs and fruits. As Bruncvik made his recovery, he set out to return to Bohemia, Czechia, and more specifically Prague, with his newly attained two-tailed partner. Along the way, he encountered nine-headed dragons and a land of people sporting the heads of dogs, many eyes, and an abundance of fingers.
In this land of dog heads and polydactyl extremities, Bruncvik rescued a princess named Africa from a treasure-hoarding dragon and denied the wishes of the eighteen-fingered king to marry the princess, but before he left, he found a magic sword in the castle keep and took it. The princess told him that such a weapon was only visible to men of great power, but otherwise only women could see it. As they embarked on their trip back, they fought demons and other creatures of peculiar nature, and with the help of such a sword, they emerged victorious every time. Upon returning home from his seven-year detour, he was able to secretly make news of his return to his former wife, who then called off her new marriage. Bruncvik also retook the throne with his all-powerful blade. Upon his eventual passing, the sword was hidden inside the famous Charles Bridge and would only emerge and show itself to the noble spirit of Saint Wenceslas or another of similar caliber.
Coming to Prague for my semester abroad, I was slightly suspicious of the validity of this story, as I have never seen a two-tailed lion before, and I was sure that the unique genetic oddities of the dog-headed people were slightly exaggerated. Nonetheless, I marveled at the opportunity to find such an enchanted artifact. In fact, I was ecstatic. So you could only imagine my heartbreak upon discovering there was no sword hidden in Charles Bridge, as I, a man of worthiness and noble tendencies, could not see anything, thus leaving one logical assumption to make: this story is absolutely and utterly fictitious.
Quite devastating in its entirety, I felt nearly hopeless. A pit in my sense of purpose and fear of a wasted semester dawned on me.
I needed a new purpose before I lost myself. I walked around aimlessly, lost in my own psyche, for what felt like years but in reality was nearly three hours. I passed a band of kids graffitiing a wall, a group of old men sharing a cigarette outside a pub, an older lady book-shopping in a store next to a cathedral, as well as a weird amount of merchandise with a sad-looking man on it.
And then it hit me: the purpose is all around me. The beautiful people of the Czech Republic seemingly find purpose in everything they do. I was more than certain I could get to the bottom of this philosophical phenomenon and, with my return to the purposeless people of the United States of America, share it.
My first step was to befriend three local Czechs, which originally I had pegged as the largest obstacle due to my hopelessly repulsive sense of depleted enthusiasm. I had come to find that rather, it was the easiest step, as my new friends Adam, Jiri, and Adam seemed to have looked past it.
My second step was to formulate interview questions that let me nitpick the metaphysicality of their being on fundamental levels, which I would say turned out to be the most difficult task of all.
My third step was to then gain their approval for an interview, which was swiftly granted after I allowed myself to be “destroyed” in a game of foosball.
Now I will provide the full transcript from the interview below:
Myself: WK
Adam: AC
Jiri: JS
Adam: AH
WK: “When you wake up in the morning, what do you think about?”
AC: “Check the phone see when bus is leaving and see how many minutes”
JS: “How much time do I have before I leave the house”
AH: “I wake and I think about jerking off honestly”
WK: “Do you get hungry? And if you do get hungry, what does your body feel like?”
AC: “I feel like little cramps in my stomach whin I’m hungry”
JS: “I get hungry and idk my stomach hurt”
AH: “I haven’t been hungry in the past 2 months”
WK: “Would you rather live in Florida or California, or even London?”
AC: “London yeah id go with London”
JS: “I’d probably live in London”
AH: “Tampa in Florida”
WK: “What is the most cool or chill place you have ever been to?”
AC: “I’d say when we went to Switzerland the three of us plus another”
JS: “I’d probably goes to pub every week and has a good time”
AH: “I’d say Dubai mall, the biggest mall I have ever been to”
WK: “Do you have any aspirations in this life? Do you believe in an afterlife?”
AC: “Find a good partner that I can build a family with and about the afterlife idk, but I hope there is something”
JS: “To be happy and have a job that makes me happy and I do not believe in the afterlife”
AH: “Finding a partner, having money, and about the afterlife, I think there is something, not heaven or hell but something”
WK: “Why Prague?”
AC: “Education”
JS: “Friends”
AH: “Nightlife”
I feel I walked out of the interview more befuddled than I walked into it. Their answers, seeping with unwavering resoluteness, seemed in line with my very own. Had they really found the purpose of life so effortlessly? And was it really so easy to grasp on my own? And where do I start?
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