Love, Life, and Death
What is love? Have you really contemplated this issue? I mean, have you really, really, profoundly given a thorough thought to this question until you get dead tired and almost insane?
The issue of love, together with all the other profound problems of life, has preoccupied my mind throughout my life, perhaps ever since boyhood.
When someone claims to love you, do you feel satisfied, happy, and calm? Or do you get uneasy? Love actually gets you insane. It doesn't give you peace. Love takes. It doesn't give. The one who claims to love you is actually taking advantage of you in order to survive in this world, which is harsh in every respect, physically, culturally, and emotionally.
When you love someone, you tend to forget conveniently that you're actually depriving your loved one of their freedom. You're depriving them of their right *not* to be loved and live free.
When you love your loved one, you expect them to be happy. That wish for their happiness is highly evaluated. No one seems to doubt its value. Actually, that wish of yours for the happiness of your loved one is depriving them of their right *not* to become happy. They do have the right to remain unhappy.
What, you will surely ask, am I talking about? I'm dead serious. I'm not kidding or anything. Love is actually violent, atrocious, merciless. Love claims to wish happiness for your loved one, but it wishes happiness in your own way, not in their own way. Suppose your loved one has an entirely different world-view. Suppose your loved one wishes they hadn't been born, at least not out of you? You may have brought them into the world, saying you needed them to be born because you love them. But haven't you ever considered you may be lying to yourself? Haven't you ever once thought that there might perhaps be a possibility that people have the right *not* to be born?
But how could I have learned what my child in my womb or in your wife's womb wanted? How could I have known whether they wanted to be born or not?
That's a serious, profound issue, isn't it? Yes, I admit that I was being a bit cruel in pressing you about this matter. You may have been quite innocent. In fact, 99.9 percent of children safely turn out to be relatively happy. Even if many of them do grow up to realize the harsh realities of life and hope *not* to live their lives twice in exactly the same way they have lived them, they still do want to go on living and they think that all in all, their blessings surpass their misfortunes. And that's basically why they go on to have kids of their own.
But please don't forget that there are some people -- I don't know how many but perhaps 0.1 percent of people -- who seriously wish that they hadn't been born. They're so determined in that matter that at their early age, perhaps at 20 or so, or even earlier, they make their minds very firmly *never* to drag anyone into this totally insane pigsty of a world. Their determination is so firm that they even hope to kill themselves before they can ever begin to hope to have children of their own.
Life is, despite all its shortcomings, basically a good thing. That's what most people -- at the center of the Bel Curve -- believe. Okay then, may God bless them for that. I sincerely wish them continued happiness and prosperity. But please don't forget that there are certainly some people out there who sincerely wish they hadn't been born.
And once they've come into the world, they are eternally deprived of their right to kill themselves. People around them, especially their families, expect them to be reasonably happy, never contemplating such an atrocious thing as suicide. If you ever mention any such thing, your parents will dispair. They'll freak out because they can't ever face that horrible reality that in order to escape that fear, they begin even to abuse you.
Life can be really, truly cruel for the sensitive, who see too much, too deep. Let them *not* be brought into the world. Please, God, let them perish peacefully without pain!
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