Death: An Inevitable Bliss or Quick Escape?

For a long time I have wondered why many persons, especially the youth, commit suicide. Statistics in my country for the amount of suicides per year for teens can make one gasp or even hit their head into a wall. Many people consider life a gift, yet these persons throw it away like it's a piece of trash. Let's consider it for a moment though.

When there are two roads before us - life and death - and our primal self-preserving instinct makes us choose the former, yet our mind believes it cannot go on, what should we do? How do we organize our thoughts to help us consider which path we should choose? What makes life so much better than death, or vice versa?

What I see life as is simple: pain, suffering, anger, hatred, envy, happiness, joy, humility and love. (I wonder why I listed all the unpleasant ones first?) What's important here is that all of these are feelings. Life is full of emotions. While you are living, you experience all of these. Someone who is living simply for the sake of living without experiencing his emotions isn't really alive.

Death on the other hand is so mysterious. There are so many unanswered questions about death. Where do we go? What do we see? How do we feel? What lies ahead? Many religions have offered answers to these by promising a painless, never-ending blissful dream or paradise or heaven. There is so much excitement about wanting to know more about it. And when life isn't all too well, death offers a way out, whether for better or for worse. The fear of it that we experience that pushes our body into self-preservation mode is over-powered by the anxiety of being dead and experiencing the afterlife. This makes you just want to go ahead and die right now, doesn't it?

In a nutshell, life is the path filled with happiness and joy which comes coupled with sorrows and inevitable misery at some point. (Remember emotions come hand-in-hand as you can't experience one without having experienced the other first). In death, there would be a challenge and certainly an undying thirst for the unforeseen journey that is only taught about in holy scriptures would be quenched. However, as we all know, all things must die. Death is inevitable and life is also much a mystery in itself. When given a choice, I believe I would choose to live on. Eventually I will have to die, so why rush to it?

Dreams, aspirations, hopes and even pitiful love can add excitement to a dull life. Exploring our imagination and preserving it through literature, or dreaming up fantasies about creating a better universe using modernized technology and new economic concepts, or even performing actions which our minds don't even think our bodies can accomplish are all possibilities that can only be realized by living.

When you are faced with the choice, if ever you have to make it, my advice is to be selfish. Pleasing yourself is above pleasing your loved ones, friends and any other related parties including society. It is just a waste of time if you can't be content with your choice. If life is what you choose, then make the most of it. If death is what you seek, send me an email from the afterlife letting me know what to expect. Remember, life is a choice; death isn't (at least for me)!

RT Rulz