I think under certain circumstances the taking of one's own life is the bravest thing a person can do. I also think that under the same circumstances that deciding not to take one's own life is the bravest thing a person can do. This is not a contradiction. Both are equally brave in that simply having faced the decision and decided one way or the other* is the boldest behavior, in a heroic sense.
I say this now because I have had friends who have been reckoned to've ended their own lives. Oddly, it seems to me, there were not only loved ones of the deceased with the fixed inclination toward ruling out the possibility, I suppose sometimes out of denial, but there were others, as well, who seemed set in the belief that it was surely suicide, not only those who felt they were facing the truth, as each case may be, but with a titillating taste of morbid reassurance.
Now, I am not heroic. If I had had over the course of time a foolproof means to end it all, I doubt I'd be here. The fear of failure, however, a resulting disability, or of being caught, has governed any such thoughts. In this sense I have never really made a decision to go on living so much as *reached a default position. I'll bet you anything that there are a billion more like me.
Now I guess one surefire method would be to climb to the top of somewhere quite high and leap to the glorious death afforded one who gets to feel that rush all the way down. But being rabidly opposed to bombing people, I cannot help fear that last act's ending as hypocrisy from on high.
Regarding living in a heroic sense, if I were truly bold I would risk being thought utterly mad and climb to the top of somewhere quite high and scream to everyone what I really think. And I'd never stop.
I say this now because I have had friends who have been reckoned to've ended their own lives. Oddly, it seems to me, there were not only loved ones of the deceased with the fixed inclination toward ruling out the possibility, I suppose sometimes out of denial, but there were others, as well, who seemed set in the belief that it was surely suicide, not only those who felt they were facing the truth, as each case may be, but with a titillating taste of morbid reassurance.
Now, I am not heroic. If I had had over the course of time a foolproof means to end it all, I doubt I'd be here. The fear of failure, however, a resulting disability, or of being caught, has governed any such thoughts. In this sense I have never really made a decision to go on living so much as *reached a default position. I'll bet you anything that there are a billion more like me.
Now I guess one surefire method would be to climb to the top of somewhere quite high and leap to the glorious death afforded one who gets to feel that rush all the way down. But being rabidly opposed to bombing people, I cannot help fear that last act's ending as hypocrisy from on high.
Regarding living in a heroic sense, if I were truly bold I would risk being thought utterly mad and climb to the top of somewhere quite high and scream to everyone what I really think. And I'd never stop.
