One Hundred and Twenty Five

I’m wasting what little time I have left.

Of course I am. We’re all wasting our time. None of us is doing what we should be. But this assumes there’s something we should be doing.

Camus said there’s only one serious philosophical question: is life worth living? Once we decide what we should be doing, we have a reason for living and suicide is no longer an option.

What should I be doing? This question troubled me when I was a child. I knew that, in theory, something is better than nothing; but in practice, knowing that if this world should ever become too terrible for me to bear, I could end it, always consoled me.

The pain of others always troubled me more than my own because I could endure my own, but I could do nothing to help them endure theirs. I sat by the dying and watched them cling to lives I wouldn’t want, and decided my mission would be to help others, making their lives worth living so their deaths wouldn’t be meaningless. But I failed.

Worst of all, I failed the person I loved most. She trusted me, but I couldn’t stop the doctors from butchering her.

I knew, when I was a child, that this world is terrible. And now it's worse. The day is coming when the living will envy the dead. Many already do. Better to die young. Best is never to have been born.