One Over X News

On Mind and Perspective

Someone that I do not even know just sent me her comments regarding Hunter S. Thompson's rfecent suicide. I know that he was an author but largely he was someone that I did not know. I am sad whenever someone dies but it is always particularly distressing when someone takes his or her own life. In my experiences whatever there has been that has not personally made sense has always been the direct result of imbalance. I one way or another Thompson's life was so out of balance that it must have seemed that only the final act of desperation remained.

As I say, I did not know the man. I have not even read any of his writing. We are equal in that regard I am sure. Still, I have heard things in passing. His remarks were often newsworthy. In that we are not equals, not yet anyway. I guess that we might have had a lively discussion had we ever met. From what I have heard about him any such discussion would have resulted in a panicked call for the men in white coats and the padded van. Let's just say that one of the things that I have in common with almost anyone that writes is the shared out-of kilter view of the world.

I am not sure why I even received the odd email except that the sender felt a need to share her grief with others. Apparently she knew him personally or at least felt that she did. Perhaps it was only that having read everything that he had ever published, she understood how he thought. Her comments moved me enough to think about the problems that I have endured in my life; certainly the worst of them have been the most recent ones. Even so, I have always kept moving and had other options from time to time.

Stay out of the corner.

The other day The Rob said something to me that previously I had never hought about at all. "Regardless how bad things have been you keep going. You haven't given up." I guess it has never been in my nature to just give up. The times in my life when I have quit something there has been a very good reason. Always there were options.

I think that suicide is really just giving up. It is surrendering to whatever forces that have thrown your life's situation out of balance. It resolves nothing except perhaps for the pain and suffering of the immediate moment. I am not altogether certain that it even resolves any of that. I have not been down that dead-end ally. I have always had options.

I must admit that here and there in my travels I have been down some strange mental corridors. I am not content. I am never complacent. I have never done enough of the right things in life to even take a break. All the wrong turns have conspired to become my present situation. I could blame everyone else but they aren't the reason for my miserable circumstances. They may have contributed to the imbalance in my life, heaving more and more weight onto the load that I am trying to bear. Still, they are not the cause. This is a path that long ago I chose to take. I don't remember why I decided to take this detour and I doubt that it is even all that important in the larger context. At the time I probably didn't know any better. Even if I were to go back and change things, I would likely still end up here, exactly where I am. There are no conincidences and no accidents. I am where I am and even as I continue, I will always be exactly where I am.

A friend once asked me in the strictest confidence if I had ever thought of suicide. It was one of those strange questions that somehow you just know that the asker has other motives. I knew a lot of the secret things that were going on in his life; things that I doubt that he even thought that I knew. He was a quiet sort and didn't say much about his inner thoughts so the fact that he was asking me at all about something so serious gave me a bit of a jolt. I knew that for whatever reason he had obviously been thinking along those lines.

"I've always been too busy," I replied. I didn't realize the subtle humor in that remark. I really meant what I was saying, though. I really have always been too busy to contemplate suicide. There needs to always be altyernatives; always have some options.

I believe that as humans we are always one goal away from the next interim destination in life. You will never arrive where you believe you are heading. There are just a lot of way stations in life and it is my belief that you are supposed to visit all of them before you check out. It is the human 'race' and you are competing in the marathon of your life against the field of only one, just you. You may eroniously believe that suicide is a means of leapfrogging all the way to the end of the course and that you have somehow bent the rules of existence and short-changed the giver of problems. That is not the case. Killing yourself probably is contrary to some law of balance in nature. Even if you aren't religious you have to believe that murder is wrong even if it is committed upon your one special and specific unique minority.

Someone once told me that in order to not bear the burden of guilt for killing someone, you have to demonize another person. I think that is an amazingly profound statement. It is the means of justification for warfare throughout human history. Every struggle always renders down to an 'us against them' solution. 'Them' is always bad; 'Us' is always right. I guess that if you demonize yourself enough, you could generate enough self loathing that in your own twisted mind the act of ending it all seems justified.

The problem is that Death is not the final destination of Life. Life is a cyclical process. It may seem that it is finitely limited to a brief span of a lifetime but that is only our poorly refined human perception of the process. We do not see what is behind the exhibition's curtains. The portions of the side shows that lie beyond our mental grasp may be the foundations of our strangest dreams and worse nightmares, but they are not all that easily accessible. I don't know a lot of things but I am confident that suicide resolves nothing and ends only the perception that others may have had of your life.

And so others mourn and others see to your final affairs. Others accept the burdens of your wealth or debt. The only difference is that you are no longer directly involved in the daily affairs of those that you cared about and those few that really and truly cared about you.

Death does not complete a cycle, it only changes the perspective. Your problems do not go away; they are adopted and managed, somehow. Somehow we always end up managing all the problems that are thrown our way. The problems and cares of this world are, oddly enough, also part of the freak show illusion that underlies the reality to which we belong at any present moment. Also, we are always here and now. Nothing ever really changes except for the perception that we have of the passage of time through our eyes.

Thompson had a writer's mind. Having been born with the curse or having had developed one of those myself, I can maybe speak to the odd way that he analyzed and filtered the data that the rest of the world easily ignores. The writer's mind is often thought to be more than the normal means to perceive the world. The ironical construction of the events of a liftime warp and distort a writer's perception of events in the endless procession of cause and effect; some of the causes we do not understand but we see every effect that is within the caress of our senses. Some writers will deceive themselves more than others and I admit that I have been guilty of taking flights of fantasy. Writers respond to what would bore others with a cocked head and a smirk, finding amusement in even the most mundane things.

I may be totally wrong about many things but in this one instance, I know I am right because things seem to work the way that I expect.

I can even understand why I am having the problems that I have in life. I can accept things because I do not have the power or momentary ability to dramatically alter course. As a human I have the option to change. We always can adapt. It is the dream that deludes us. We are forever immersed in our self-contained fantasies. 'If only I could' is the mantra that continues until we begin to listen to the advice of the naysayers and submit to the burden of proof that most of our dreams will go unfulfilled. 'If I could only' grinds down with the aches of pains of growing old to the abject, exhausted acceptance of 'If I had only'.

You are NOT old until you submit to your chronological age. Your dreams are not over until you accept the negativity of those that are only inviting you - whether out of love or envy - to share in the misery of their company. If there are so many among us that know exactly what should be done then why is it that almost every one of them is no better off than you or me? Did you ever notice that in every generation the few that succeed are never finished succeeding. They understand that life is a process. They have it in their schematic diagram to seek further failure. They are wired with access to the full knowledge that that is their nature and the very reason for their existence. They know that everyone needs to take necessary risks in order to advance.

We should live to fulfill our dreams and aspirations. Really, it really doesn't matter if there is an point of arrival anywhere near what might have been a goal. Life is not about resting at an achieving goal but about continually setting more lofty ones. Living is not even about the goals and goals only matter in that you need some guidance and direction. It is the journey that we are here to experience, not the accolades for having reached a goal. It is meaningless to pursue the praise, glory or condemnations of the others upon whom we rely for support as much as our general amusement. At some time we all have goals and in our fantastic premonition of how we will construct a personal utopia, we deceive ourselves. Everything makes complete sense and it feels like it really is very possible. We boldly and bravely set out to seek fame and fortune, in whatever way our fantasy defines both.

By the time that we are deluded and disillusioned into wrongly believing that our quest has ended in failure, we are also feeling and probably even showing the weathering of the many early mornings and late nights of struggle. Nothing is ever intended to end in failure. Failure is a way station even as much as is success. Neither are destinations because there are no personal destinations that we can perceive from within our own consciousness and reason; there is only the process called living. We always claim that we are trying to make the most of it; most of us never even try.

I go on writing, editing and revising. That is the process that governs my life. I imagine that I will be at it for a while longer. When I can write no more it will be because I have nothing left to say. If that coincides with my natural ending, then I suppose it will be fitting. Nature may have to ultimately conclude things as others perceive my passing because as I have readily admitted all along, I really suck when it comes to creating an ending.

E

posted by Unknown @ 10:21 AM