Why do we toy with the thought of death, only to hesitate at the edge? It is peculiar, isn’t it? The bravado of declaring, “I am no coward,” as one pulls a trigger, while another, with equal conviction, declares the same by choosing to endure. But what are they defending? Reputation? Integrity? A shadow of their own approval? It’s a curious performance for an audience we won’t even acknowledge, let alone one we won’t know when we’re gone.
The fixation on endings—on placing that final punctuation mark, be it a period or an exclamation—misses the point. What of the sentence, the paragraph, the narrative itself? Wouldn’t most of us prefer a single, potent phrase over a sprawling mess of incoherence? And isn’t that the crux of it? We agonize over how it ends, oblivious to the quality of what precedes it.
The tragic allure of self-destruction, particularly the violent efficiency of a bullet, has its poetic undertones, doesn’t it? But poetry is seldom kind to its subject. Forgotten as easily as the dark musings we discard, these moments leave little more than a faint ripple. For what? A grand gesture, a fleeting relief? How absurd, and yet how devastatingly human.
There’s no judgment here—not for the "coward" who hesitates at the edge, nor the "hero" who steps forward. Judgment itself has grown tiresome. These labels—strong, weak, brave, foolish—have lost their meaning, their weight. Perhaps this is the fatigue some of us come to know—not merely physical or emotional, but existential. A weariness of the constant evaluation, the relentless pursuit of meaning or purpose. Rest beckons—not the kind found in sleep or death, but something deeper. Perhaps a detachment from the farce of it all.
Yet, in this disillusionment, there’s a strange freedom. Patterns emerge, repeating infinitely, as if to say: "Arriving is an illusion." Maybe this is the arrival—this understanding that there is no destination. Only this moment, this realization, this quiet rebellion against the need for anything more. And what if that’s enough? What if all of it—the hope, the despair, the comedy of it all—is the point?
