Life has always been a very delicate thing. Effervescent, Approximate, Tiring and as per some experts, not even real. Death, in direct contrast is perpetual, peaceful and no expert can possibly say that the deaths of Pharoahs who died thousands of years ago is not real.
So naturally death attracted me. Death, the wonderful state of infinite tranquility where nothing will matter, neither the pain of banging my feet with the corner of a leg of a table, nor the heartache of a lover gone away, nor the pressures of earning money and leading a successful life as per the societal standards nothing! Death is peace.
Every significant action or a major event of our lives is performed as a base for what's coming next. Academic excellence precedes getting a job at a big company which precedes having a good deal of money which precedes sophisticated investment plans and extravagant expenditures from where two possibilities emerge - you may want to earn limitlessly and selfishly or you may want to earn to give back to the society.
Now, at no point we stop and wonder why we're doing what we're doing.
Taking my own example, I am pursuing Chartered Accountancy in India. The end result of this course would be a CA who will either approve financial statements or work under some boss at a low level in the scalar chain of a giant organisation or high level in the scalar chain of a small organisation. However, you'll find very few people who are in the profession for anything more than money. In fact, in any profession, any walk of life, all our efforts are put in making more money, either for our own gains or for others. Why Money?
Money is the basis for getting every commodity for which you don't have to directly put any effort.
For instance, your mother cooks dinner for you at home for free but the same product (well, similar utility) in a restaurant will require you to pay them some pieces of paper in return of which they will cook for you, serve you and most importantly expect a tip from you (hehe).
You're basically using money to avert efforts.
But doesn't it sound a bit redundant and kind of illogical that people put in highest levels of efforts in earning money, an item whose ONLY use is to REDUCE your efforts? It's a funny world we live in.
Maybe we are so madly in love with the idea of not having to work again that we work our asses off for years and years in the hopes of achieving it.
So by all this, what I am really trying to say about Life is that it's based on something which is not only valuable only as much as the people value it, it's also a series of events which just happen - few people pay attention to the Why.
And that is why Death is such an attractive prospective. Think about it, many people don't commit suicide even though they want to for a long long time because of what their absence will do to their family, friends and other people they know. The funny thing is, once dead nothing will matter to you. The Departed don't come back to share the pain or agony of others, don't have any guilt of their own.. The dead are just plain fucking dead.
Now isn't that wonderful? No physical pain, mental torture, human flaws and limitations...
Moreover, in the larger scheme of things, one person has no value. Not just philosophically, we see all around us that individual freedom, choice, opinion has no value in society and governance. Since life trumps any kind of work (a person committing suicide because of work pressure is seen as someone stupid because "he could just leave it, why end your life for it?!"), it makes death that much more special.. Because it directly.. Well, ends life.
Death > Life > Work
So we have large citadels, palaces, parliaments, sports centres, bars, clubs, temples EVERYTHING.. That we humans did. That we created out of the stones and other material found on Earth. Imagine if all humans are Dead.
In fact, imagine a rather clichéd situation where a heat wave + magnetic wave breaks from the sun and hits the Earth with so huge a force that it can shake it from the inside and blast it out!
Will any of this matter?
Imagine a few 100 survive and go to some other planet using a space shuttle or whatever humans may have created by then. And let's even go so far as to assume that they find a habitable planet. What next? The purpose of LIFE is continuance.. Keeping the dice rolling, constantly reproducing so that the race survives. But what is the interest behind such survival?
And that's precisely why, I have always wanted to die more than live.
Yes, we have the most complex bodies ever; Yes, we have the most gifted brains ever; Yes, we are special and awesome and just the best of the best.. But what's the point of it all?
We have so many evils in us and most of it is just laughable.. MOST.
Take lying for instance. We are probably the only species which indulges in manipulation and misrepresentation of facts in order to deceive another member of our own species. Lying takes place when a dominant, high moraled individual's opinion matters to the suppressed, low moraled individual so much that the latter needs to showcase something other than the fact.
Take formal parties where we are expected to sit and stand and dance and drink in a certain way so as to not end up being a laughing stock. What's the ultimate goal of it all?
Most people spend their lives in petty nonsensical things like family politics, hypocrisy, making someone look bad among a billion other things which just goes to show our true status in the scale of evolution - and I can assure you, we are the only species who can be so fucking flawed and yet consider ourselves superior to each and every other species there is..
So now you know why I wanted to die..
Because life is a lot of pain with zero worthy returns.
In the language of finance, the NPV of the project is -ve when age and experiences are discounted by the rate of evolution..
