In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, the spirit of the deceased school headmaster Albus Dumbledore says to Harry, “Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living and, above all, those who live without love.”
It’s a tragic fact that many chronically and pharmaceutically-untreatably depressed people won’t miss this world if they, for whatever reason, never wake up again. It’s not that they necessarily want to die per se; it’s that they want their pointless corporeal suffering to end.
Also, I read [and any reader should correct me if I’m in error] Sigmund Freud postulated that, regardless of one’s mental health and relative happiness or existential contentment, the ultimate goal of our brain/mind is death’s bliss because of the general stressful nature of our physical existence, i.e. anxiety or “stimuli”. It’s important to clarify, however, that it’s not brain death per se that is the aim but rather the kind of absolute peace that only brain death can offer in this hectic world.
Indeed, the Sigmund Freud character in the 2011 film A Dangerous Method, muttered upon having a near-death-experience heart attack, “How sweet it must be to die.”
Quite unfortunately, some people genuinely feel the greatest gift life offers them is that someday they get to die. Perhaps worsening matters is when suicide is simply not an option, meaning there’s little hope of receiving an early reprieve from their literal life sentence. And, of course, reincarnation is therefore the ultimate and unthinkable Hell.
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I awoke from another very bad dream, a reincarnation nightmare
where having died I’m yet again being forced to be reborn back into human form
despite my pleas I be allowed to rest in permanent peace.
My bed wet from sweat, I futilely try to convince my own autistic brain
I want to live, the same traumatized dysthymic brain displacing me
from the functional world.
Within my nightmare a mob encircles me and insists that life’s a blessing,
including mine.
I ask them for the blessed purpose of my continuance. I insist
upon a practical purpose.
Give me a real purpose, I cry out, and it’s not enough simply to live
nor that it’s a beautiful sunny day with colorful fragrant flowers!
I’m tormented hourly by my desire for emotional, material and creative gain
that ultimately matters naught, I explain. My own mind brutalizes me like it has
a sadistic mind of its own. I must have a progressive reason for this harsh endurance!
Bewildered they warn that one day on my death bed I’ll regret my ingratitude
and that I’m about to lose my life.
I counter that I cannot mourn the loss of something I never really had
so I’m unlikely to dread parting from it.
Frustrated they say that moments from death I’ll clamor and claw for life
like a bridge jumper instinctively flailing his limbs as though to grasp at something
anything that may delay his imminent thrust into the eternal abyss.
How can I in good conscience morosely hate my life
while many who love theirs lose it so soon? they ask.
Angry I reply that people bewail the ‘unfair’ untimely deaths of the young who’ve received early reprieve
from their life sentence, people who must remain behind corporeally confined
yet do their utmost to complete their entire life sentence—even more if they could!
The vexed mob then curse me with envy for rejecting what they’d kill for—continued life through unending rebirth.
“Then why don’t you just kill yourself?” they yell,
to which I retort “I would if I could.
My life sentence is made all the more oppressive by my inability to take my own life.”
“Then we’ll do it for you.” As their circle closes on me, I wake up.
Could there be people who immensely suffer yet convince themselves
they sincerely want to live when in
fact they don’t want to die, so greatly they fear Death’s unknown?
No one should ever have to repeat and suffer again a single second that passes.
Nay, leave me be to engage the dying of my blight!
fgsjrPOEM 