A Suicide Note

This is a suicide note. Of course, it is obvious from the title but I am yet undead. No, it is not one of those days which went bad for me. In fact, I had a very successful day. Something, many youngsters in my country would die to live in. I won’t get into the details of my life because, it is irrelevant. What I am going through can happen to anybody; to people walking in the shimmering alleys of their lives till right down to the penniless peasant. Depression is an uninvited guest at everybody’s table.

For a while now, I have come to the realisation that life is a trap. There is no way out other than living it or ending it which is exactly what makes it frustrating. In life, there is no alternative to the process of living. Every other thing in life has an alternative. Thanks to capitalism, my life is being spent around enforcing that very scheme of things: choices. It is either this brand or that one. This sitcom or the other one. This type of food or the other exotic one. This apartment or the other one. This job or the other. Alternatives are everywhere but sooner or later, I find myself growing out of them. I try and find something better and stick to that for a while and keep moving so. This in a crude sense, defines the living conditions of humans. Even the enlightened ones live the life of choices. Their elaborate travels is testament to how frequently they change boats and how they do not like sticking to anything for a long time. All the choices in life, all the hard work we put into getting something, achieving  something eventually ends up in the dusty corners of our memories; at best some old history books. They become stories that we tell our children by glorifying our petty struggles back in the day.

Then, why do we do this? We do this to keep living. To stay on the sane side of the table. It is an evident fact that if you find something to keep yourself busy, some purpose, some goal, your existence holds meaning. But sooner or later, no matter what choice you make, you will realise that life in all its greatness is pretty meaningless. Ask yourself this once in a while to appreciate the “divine comedy” as Dante put it. The purpose of life is no more than to serve ourselves. Many schools of thought have emerged arguing to say that the purpose of life is service to humanity, service to animals and a whole lot of other BS. But all of it eventually wears out. In the deathbed, men die either with a delusional conviction that was hammered into them that they’ve lived a great and meaningful life or with the realisation of how meaningless it all was.

So, some of us, we tend to realise this meaningless struggle, a moot point pretty early in life. We move to the insane side of the table which mostly attracts invitations from the other side of the table to join the ranks of the sane once again. But we all made choices for being where we exactly want to be. When a person realises the meaninglessness that the package of life comes with, he often wants to put an end to it. But how are they so sure that death is any better? How would one justify the benefits of death over life? What more intrigue does death hold over the already fading intrigue of life? I don’t know it. Nobody does. It is just an alternative to life and the process of living.

So, whenever I am driven to the brink, I always remember this: At the end, death will visit us all. He was invited to pay us a visit the moment we set foot into the house of life. Till that time, no matter how many times I call out the illusion of life, I will hold on to it just to see how it turns out. Everybody will eventually see what I was shouting about and then one day, I can tell them, “I told you so!” and make peace with it.

3 thoughts on “A Suicide Note

  1. Adithya

    You’ve got no idea how many people you’ve influenced in the right way throughout the years, including myself. I think nihilism is naivety at it’s worst because life in itself is beyond the scope of our understanding. I’m hoping you don’t adopt this rather brazen ideology and hopefully you continue putting up brilliant pieces of work on all platforms because I genuinely enjoy reading the content you put out.
    Cheers!

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  2. Pawan Bhandarkar

    I love and embrace every word of this. I often think about this when I’m in the shower and the steam makes everything foggy or at night when I turn off the lights and put the blanket over my head to make it even darker. There’s just something about being able to shut off the world around you that puts everything into perspective.

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  3. Aadi

    “Existential Crisis” – A better title to define this write-up. It sums up how I used to feel sometime back. Now I feel I have graduated from that place. Now I am genuinely disinterested about anything per say. Everytime I am not occupied with some responsibility of mine, the only thing I wish for is the end to this cycle of life-death and attain moksha if and when He wishes for me to attain it.

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