The only reason I'm here is for her sake, but only just. After she is gone that there's little else that compels me to stay.
It's not as if I'm unafraid of dying. It frightens me just as much as it does you. But even now don't find living to be more appealing, for reasons I cannot remember anymore. I'm just here, a clock in the shape of a person that's waiting to die.
-Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
Hope this is not too personal, but why did you choose to set yourself on fire? It's a brutal and painful way to go. It's also brutal for the person who would have found you, seeing the disfigured and charred body.
Maybe in a suicidal state of mind it's difficult to think about the after effects and all you can think about is to end the pain of living.
Though... I won't deny the possibility that spite may have been involved as well.
Personally I find life meaningless but I really want to be alive. So I am curious to learn another side.
That said I don't know if you and I are two sides of a coin. You ask the question on whether there is meaning in life, and answer that there is none. I look at the question, and find myself unbothered in any case.
I spent years deliberately and intentionally slowly distancing myself from every friend, every acquaintance, until my existence was nothing more then a fading echo of a memory to everyone that would mourn not just a death of a human being, but the my death in particular. I've crossed paths with many of them in recent years, and to them my face is that of a stranger's.
So to answer your question. No. Not without some sort of actual desire to live from myself.
That's one way to look at it. But it's one viewpoint of many.
Another one is that they may just enjoy being around you and communicating with you without necessarily feeling you or your life is their responsibility. And on your end you might recognize that you bring value to other people just by being you. You recognizing someone as your sole reason to live doesn't place a burden on them automatically.
I've deliberately tried to keep out emotion of this and to keep it transactional just to illustrate a different, simpler, viewpoint.
Also a more concrete example: I don't know you but from the couple of comments you've left I really enjoy the way you write. The cadence, word choice, it's concise and thoughtful. Brief and mostly one sided interaction but already made my life a bit better.
We have been dead for billions of years. We have no memory of concept of time or ourselves beyond our lives. Similarly, we will be dead for billions of years, almost certainly with no sense of self or concept of time.
The tiny speck of time that is our human lives is so small it seems unimportant if not foolish to rush through it. If the default state for such a large percentage of time is no experience, any experience, even the ones that cause us to suffer, has such a novelty and quickness that surely you should just wait.
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I also like the song 'Any Major Dude' which is about just going to sleep because you'll feel differently the next day. If you look at things like suicide rates and coal fired stove availability in England[1], it's clear people rush to kill themselves who wouldn't have if they had to wait.
1:https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=923193...
Pitiable attempt at bad poetry aside, it is not as if my mother is bedridden with illness. Barring the unforeseen, another decade at minimum I think is reasonable. Who knows after that.
Until then I am waiting. And doing nothing else but waiting.
If you're just waiting -- I hope you at least find things you somewhat enjoy to pass the time. Escapism through books or video games or nature or whatever can make the waiting more bearable.
In reality, I think we're all just waiting but most have found some way to distract themselves from that fact :)
Thanks for the chat hope you find some kind of solace.
Is it really a burden? I've been through a very rough year and basically just live for my two wonderful kids. The only thing worse than the suffering is knowing my kids will remember their dad as being a coward who killed himself, and will have to grow up without one. You could see it as a burden but if I was that person I'd be happy to be there for them and profoundly wish they were happier.
Say I were to give you cup of water, made of the most fragile glass to ever exist, and asked you to hold it. I'd imagine that it would be fine for a few minutes or even a few hours.
Does that stay the same if I asked you to hold it for days? Or months or years? Forcing you to always have to look tie a hand to it, always having to pause every other aspect of your life so that this glass doesn't shatter from setting it down just the wrong way, or going outside in the wrong temperature? And you do so, but only because of the guilt you know you would feel if the glass did break.
With a parent and child, such a relationship is inherent. To a child, mother and father are their world, their protector, their provider, their everything until they are able to fly on their own.
But what of peers? Do you think such is the basis of a healthy relationship?
Were it me to be the one that would shoulder another's burden as such... I think there would be a small seed of resent that would take root in my heart. One would grow like a terrible weed choking every other plant until nothing else remained. I'm scarcely able to tend to own wellbeing, there is barely a single bread crumb to spare for another.
If this is a phase, it is one with incredible staying power.
In order to defend myself against impulsive thoughts I've had to dig deep and discover purpose which made sense to me. In my case that is a duality of contributing to mankind however I can, and devoting substantial time to enjoy the contributions made by others. Slowly synthesizing and contributing to what it means to be human. Learning how to love and appreciate everything just on the merit of its existence. It's not enough to accept life, I have to refuse to die, and mount evidence against the utility of a premature death.
What convinced you that suicide was the right option a decade ago? A specific event? Is there something you want from life which you aren't finding or receiving? Or is there an inability to connect in an emotionally positive way with your experience? Or something else?
Do you remember your first words that you spoke or the first steps you took as a toddler? Or has speech and stride been just a part of your life since a time beyond your first memories?
To me, the idea of ending my own life has always been there, as constant as the sun rising in the east. There may have been a time when it wasn't so, but I cannot find it anymore. Because of this were were half hearted attempts both before and after; a sliced wrist here, a sloppy noose there. The one was the critical one. The one who's cause was nothing more then a piece of straw that broke the camel's back. But it broke nonetheless.
The rest as they say, is history.
I've had decades to look inward and ponder why it is that I am what I am. And often the line of questioning leads down to one particular core reason; that I do not wish to be not suicidal. I've looked at every friend I've severed from my life, every decision, every opportunity I turned away from, every life milestone I will never experience. No first kiss, no first date, no birthdays parties or Christmas get togethers. There will be nothing to reminisce about at the end of my life, no taste of nostalgia at a life well spent.
And yet every time I ask myself if I regret any of it... I would have to say no, I don't. And if I could go back and do it all over again with what I know now, I wouldn't change anything. Had I killed myself then I think it would have left a terrible pain behind. As is, when I do kill myself, it will be as quiet as leaf falling from a tree.
But to entertain you. I have done international travel and volunteer work. I still do from time to time. But there's no enlightenment in doing so, just busy work for myself.
I'm very good at being completely and utterly predictable in every respect that people will see, even if all they know of me is a false name and a false persona. And thus, having met all expectations, be I become someone less interesting then the task at hand.
I realize this is likely what you didn't wish to hear but I do not know what else can be said. I am who am I am.
When you're in a rough spot emotionally, it's easy to believe things that aren't true. Please reach out for help from someone. And I'm not saying this because it's a platitude or because that's what you're supposed to say. I'm saying it because I know what this type of hole is like, it isn't pleasant, there is another way
Or there aren't. I know for sure that no one cares about me except my family. They care because we have a blood relation - but for anyone else, they literally wouldn't care if I was dead tomorrow. (I know because sometimes I disappear for weeks when things get too much. No one gives a shit, really.)
I generally agree with this, but don't you think that someone can come to a rational decision that life is not worth living for them? I'm curious what your stance on euthanasia is.
Life is hard. We never asked to be born, yet are forced to endure the hardships of life, which can be unbearable to some people. Not only are hardships wildly different for everyone, but our coping mechanisms are also different.
We can never truly understand what life is like for someone else, so saying you understand how they're feeling is indeed a platitude. I know it comes from a good place, but we shouldn't assume that the person is delusional.
Just don't tell them that they're your only reason to live and you're all good. :)
Perhaps we all were once the reason for someone else spending one more day living. Burden unfelt can be love.
I do not know how much longer I have in the world. It may be 1 year, it may be 20. What I do know is that for my current mental health, I work to get to a place where I can greet death as a long-lost friend.
Wise words. None of us know whether today is the day we die, so we develop coping mechanisms, from keeping ourselves busy with other things, to faith in religion or technology, to sobbing at the inevitability of our death and the death of the people we love.
There is also peace in surrender, in truly accepting that we are powerless to prevent it. If we fight it we will fail, like so many before us. Thus, we live, we enjoy the time we have with the people we love, and we die.
Live life, be nice to everyone around you, enjoy the now and be humble. Strangely those ideas are 2000 years old and yet we still don't understand them.
[0] https://archive.org/details/meditations_0708_librivox/medita...
Fear of death is not rational. There is nothing like "being dead" more than there is anything like "not being born". Our anxiety of our mortality is just a cruel evolutionary accident. Feeling scared when facing possible death is an evolutionary function for making animals avoid dangers. Unfortunately for humans we got a brain that can simulate the future very well, and we can understand that we will die. These two generates our fear of death. Again, the fear we feel is not based in anything rational, since we will never experience being dead.
I vehemently disagree. From the human to the amoeba, avoiding death is our primary instinct.
It might not make philosophical sense to fear death, but on a biological sense, it is the utmost priority, and any organism would benefit from having an innate, irrational, all-consuming fear of its life ceasing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-preservation
Accepting your death is a learned behaviour, not innate. Either because you know that it will happen shortly, or because of high-order rationalisation such as meditation, reading a lot of philosophy books or believing in abstract concepts such as afterlife.
It all depends on your definition of rationality: if you "think" about it, there's no reason to fear death. But if your entire physical being had a say, as it should, as we are more than just pure thought, death is the antithesis of life itself, and must be avoided at all cost.
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what’s really always there: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself die. Arid interrogation: yet the dread Of dying, and being dead, Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse — The good not done, the love not given, time Torn off unused — nor wretchedly because An only life can take so long to climb Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never; But at the total emptiness for ever, The sure extinction that we travel to And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere, And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid No trick dispels. Religion used to try, That vast moth-eaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never die, And specious stuff that says _No rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel_, not seeing That this is what we fear — no sight, no sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with, The anaesthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision, A small unfocused blur, a standing chill That slows each impulse down to indecision. Most things may never happen: this one will, And realisation of it rages out In furnace-fear when we are caught without People or drink. Courage is no good: It means not scaring others. Being brave Lets no one off the grave. Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape. It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know, Have always known, know that we can’t escape, Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go. Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring Intricate rented world begins to rouse. The sky is white as clay, with no sun. Work has to be done. Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
I don't fear the "being death" part, but there are some other aspects which are more rational:
* I fear the process of dying which is usually far from pleasant (in various ways)
* I fear the consequences of my death. I would leave behind my wife, children, friends who will mourn. I have small children and the idea that they would miss their father gives me the biggest worries.
* I fear the missed opportunities like seeing my children growing up.
https://www.webmd.com/palliative-care/features/facing-death-...
Knowing my life is finite is what makes me cherish beautiful moments. This actually often a consequence of fatal diagnoses: I could for instance observe how my father in law inceeased his interest in my children pretty much overnight after he was given one year to live by an oncologist.
There are meditation techniques focused on the awareness of death, and they can be very liberating: my favorite is called "the 9 contemplations of Atisa", if you want to look it up. I personally added a few contemplations to it, to take into account the secular setup in which we live: I find it extremely helpful to ponder the fact that we do not, and will likely never, be able to know what death is and what is the nature of consciousness. Maybe it is the end of everything, but maybe it is also the reunion with the great everything, or I will be reborn as a butterfly.
I also find the "charnel grounds" meditation to be very freeing, but some people do freak out there, so take your time.
It's the one thing that's consistently sat in the back of my mind since age 5 and hasn't left
The only response I have is this: the stress from thinking about dying makes life expectancy go down, so logically if you want to avoid death you shouldn't think about it in excess (this whole thing is contradictory, but a contradiction is the best thing I have)
Sounds like my son. He's been having occasional existential crises since about that age (he is 10 now). I don't remember worrying about it myself at such a young age, though I definitely have thought about it too much as an adult. I've learned that lying awake at 2am in bed is the worst possible time for that thought to occur. Just have to turn on the lights in that case, and find something productive to do.
I keep telling myself that I didn't notice the billions of years before my birth, so I won't notice the ones following either. Life is infinitely long, from my own perspective.
I am not afraid of dying really, but more so that I get stuck in a very bad condition that is like hell and I have to suffer a lot. If I had the option of medically assisted suicide, it would somewhat eliminate that fear as I would know that I have that option..
One thing I use to cope with it is that I am only 27 and maybe in few decades there are better treatments, at least one can hope right.. But looking at treatments for neurodegenerative illnesses, it seems they have gotten absolutely nowhere
If you fear for the people around you having to deal with your death you can take precautions and make their life easier.
If you fear debilitating illness you always have the option of going when you decide[1] and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
I wouldn't say I fear this, exactly. It's an inevitability. I've had enough close calls that I know peace comes after fear. Still though, it's unsettling, and so far no philosophy or introspection has made it less so, and the only treatment I've found for it is more good people and more life.
You have to come up with your own solution.
People who have been deathly or chronically ill have less fear of death than those who have been healthy most of their lives, partly because they know suffering, and partly because death can be promise of a future relief rather than a punishment for them.
I went from counting backwards, to being awoken, in what felt like an instant. No grand dreams or things like that...just waking up and feeling groggy in what felt like a couple of seconds, when in reality 60-90 minutes had passed.
But, what if I hadn't woken up - what if I had died on the operating table? It would still have been lights out and absolute nothingness.
I can only hope that death will be the same. One minute you're there, then nothingness. The process of dying seems to be much worse than death itself, so I hope I'll go quickly (huge aneurism, massive heart attack, etc.) or heavily sedated.
dying does almost always mean severe illness and loss of autonomy.
I might die tomorrow (or today!) or 50 years from now and I will definitely be dead a hundred years from now regardless of whatever I do. So I don't worry about it, because it's a simple waste of my precious and limited time.
Remember the old saying: Death and taxes are the two guarantees in life.