Die We Must, Noose or Not

There’s something freeing about death. Those who commit suicide have their reasons for doing so. Free at last! They can no longer fret themselves bemoaning what another man thinks of them. They also care little of what we may say of them after they are gone, they don’t have to. Disparaging comments from those around us, true or imagined, afflict living souls, but what is an insult to a corpse? It doesn’t mind your censure, neither is it perturbed by detesting. Living requires courage, conscious or subconscious, because you have at some point to face a sneer, answer to a slander, or face a provocation. Suicide demands more courage yet. Suicide means you are desperate enough to end your life despite not knowing what tomorrow has in store. Maybe there could finally be some emancipation, but surely, its likely to be just more of the same; suffering, pain, heartbreak.

When you have a 36-hour shift, and you spend every minute of it on your toes, delivering babies, attending to emergencies, administering meds, writing reports, losing some patients right before your eyes, and thereafter no one seems to be mindful of your plight but instead they opt for condescension and caustic remarks, maybe you can endure twice of that if some money comes with it, but when there is no compensation for all these woes, you lose your mind. And you make that decision that has at least the promise of freeing you.

Others do it for love. Everyday. When someone you love doesn’t return that love, with the same fervor and sincerity, when they instead love someone else, and maybe you catch them during one of their liaisons, which is probably the twentieth, is there a reason to go on living? Why go on living when you cannot have the love you desperately pine for? Dead people don’t need love, do they? Romeos do it for their Juliets, Juliet who it turns out was only asleep, and when Juliet awakes to find her Romeo dead, is their any benefit of one more minute in this vile earth. Till death do us part, only I will kill myself afterwards. What of the guilt that tails behind a mistake. One we cannot forgive ourselves, and so allow no one else to forgive us? When you have done a mistake, one that will not allow the world see you in the same light ever again, or so you think, despite however much they may try otherwise; when you cannot look at the eyes of another human being because of your sin, having your eyes shut forever feels like an escape. That same guilt and remorse hastened Judas to his suicide. What is more heartbreaking than the haunting consciousness that you have betrayed the Savior of mankind.

Some will do all that is in their power to stave off death for as long as they can, yet others actively seek its embrace. Give me something for the pain, and let me die. Jeremiah de Saint-Armour in Garcia’s Love in the Time of Cholera makes a vow against decrepitude. He cannot bear the inconvenience of old age, so he willfully ends his life by inhaling the fumes of gold cyanide. Dr. Juvenal Urbino finds him ‘bathed’ in the scent of bitter almonds. It’s a great way to start a novel:

It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.

With a suicide. But you are wrong dear doctor, it isn’t unrequited love; it’s a man afraid of old age. Maybe it is unrequited love after all, it is always unrequited love. Or maybe mostly. But what would we say of Flannery O’Connor, with a diagnosis that portends the knowledge that you are living on borrowed time? Many a mother will take a bullet for her son and a soldier for his country. Is that suicide? What of the rich man with a great harvest, with the intention of building more barns, only for the Lord to claim his soul that night. So whether I have a smile on my face today, or whether I have driven you crazy in love, or whether you party yourself stiff, or whether you eat a morsel of whatever for supper, or whether you are caught cheating in an exam and your face paints the web, one fate awaits us all. Some of us are accomplices with that fate, we get the noose and we buy the poison. Others don’t want to consider the thought that this world is not their home. But death is the wave that washes upon every human shore, whether we wish it or not. All men must die. And we are men.

Oh Sweet Success!

Even though suffering and pain has caused many of us to be resentful, I think that one of the most life-changing lesson we’ll ever learn is to be truly grateful for all that we’ve been through. Looking at my life, I can now see that it has been precisely those not so good circumstances that have made me what I am. Not that I am at my best, for I am making every effort to do much better, to be much better, and importantly, to be content. Not complacent, but content.

Success is counted sweetest

By those who ne'er succeed.

To comprehend a nectar

Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple host

Who took the flag to–day

Can tell the definition,

So clear, of victory,

As he, defeated, dying,

On whose forbidden ear

The distant strains of triumph

Break, agonized and clear!

Contentment is a choice, albeit a tough one. Most times we fret over what we do not have, when we are supposed to learn to be appreciative for what we do have. One thing that hurts gratitude and fulfillment is familiarity. When we imagine that whatever we have is normal it is easy to think that everybody else has the same privileges. They don’t. Dickinson says it’s only those who have lost who truly know what a win means. Someone who has always been winning, wouldn’t be as moved by another win as would that who has failed again and again. For the former, it’s just an ongoing streak, for the latter, it would come as a source of great joy and excitement.

To understand the sweetness of nectar requires sorest need. It’s only the thirsty who are are refreshed. It’s only by being intentional are we able to see and notice those who have carried us on their shoulders. Those who have guided us on our path. We will never automatically appreciate the strides we are making until we step out of our success and see all that is going on in the world. Then we can see how things have actually played out for our favor. We may not have all we desire yet but there are people who would appreciate that which seems dispensable and useless to us. For us it is just a normal thing, other people, and many they are, would be exceedingly grateful for such a blessing. This in part is the argument Virginia Woolf advances in her remarkable essay On Being Ill when she explains how illness opens up the senses of its victim. I agree with her, for it is when I have been really sick that I have had to imagine, and appreciate, the blessedness of health. Think of it, all the people who have not known a day of wholesome health in their lives. All those battling chronic illnesses, some even incurable. It is them who know the blessedness of good health, not us, who are okay for the better part of our lives. Success is counted sweet by those who never succeed, and we cannot tell so clearly the sweetness of victory as that person who is lying down, defeated, vanquished. We do not really know the pains of the world, at least not yet. Neither do we know that so many people― afflicted, hurt, crushed― would gladly give up their lives just to have ours.

I am what I am because the gracious Lord that He is, He sent all the amazing people my way. People who have guided me, who have helped me, who have encouraged me, who have rebuked me, and who have challenged me. Once, on my twitter thread, I came across a quote by Charles Spurgeon, “had there been some circumstance better than that which we are in right now, God would have placed us in that circumstance.” For some, we could attribute the terrible state of their circumstances to complacency, due to their failure to be diligent in business, but as long as we are committed to excellence, every circumstance just happens to be a checkpoint towards the next season of our lives.

There’s so much we take for granted as long as it is within reach, but when it is taken from us, then we can now understand what we are without it. We will lose friends and our loved ones at some point, then the part they played in our sanity and well-being, though probably insignificant until then, will become glaringly apparent.

It could be difficult, but we do need to cultivate an attitude of gratitude for who we are, who we have, and what we have. It is important that we notice people, that we notice things. Thirst, real thirst could just make a man realize that water is not after all tasteless. Let’s be grateful for what we have, and stop being anxious for what we don’t.

Aim Past the Wood

I don’t think most of you reading this chop wood that often, I hope that some of you have, nonetheless, done so once or twice, and that all of us can at least picture the endeavor. I have had to chop wood myself, and I can say with certainty borne from experience that it is not an exactly enjoyable affair, especially if you don’t know how to do it in the first place, or if you are aware that there’s something much better and easier you would rather be doing at that time.

Photo by Zhivko Minkov on Unsplash

Whilst reading Annie Dillard’s book ‘The Writing Life’― very relatable in its exploration of how bleak the life of any serious writer is― I came across this evocative encouragement. Aim for the chopping block. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it? Well, the idea here is that when you chop wood, you don’t just aim at the wood you are chopping, but at what’s beyond it, beneath it. That means that if you are chopping wood on the ground, you aim for the ground beneath the wood. I thought this brought a little bit of perspective to the goals most of us have in life. For most people, what matters is they accomplish their goals, nothing more. What if there could be something more than just the goals?

Brianna Wiest argues in 101 Essays That Will Change the Way You Think that, achieving goals is not success, how much we expand in the process is. For all we are doing, what will matter in the end is not just the goals we accomplished but the people we became in the process. Only focusing on goals is being too superficial, content with a surface view of the ocean when there’s a much more amazing sight in the depths.

While we think about this technique of chopping wood, the popular quote about shooting for the stars, so that even if we miss, we can still land on the moon ends up making much more sense, now that we can think of it reasonably. You treat the wood as a transparent means to an end, by aiming past it.

And there are ladies whose hearts you win by focusing on something more than the lady herself, something beyond her. In the end, you become a better person, and you ‘bag’ her in the process. In simple terms, you work diligently on yourself to be worthy of her, and then maybe she just may have to be worthy of you as well. For my fellow medics, you could aim for something beyond a mere grade on a paper, you could instead focus on treating your patient right, on getting them the care they so much deserve. It’s not exactly good grades that will make your patient happy, but should you focus on the latter, good grades will not be so much hard to attain.

When you keep the bigger thing in mind, the smaller things give way. Don’t be too superficial. Aim for the chopping block, if you aim for the wood, you will have nothing. Aim past the wood, aim through the wood; aim for the chopping block.

References

1. The Writing Life by Annie Dillard.

2. 101 Essays That Will Change the Way You Think by Brianna Wiest