Elephant

(Can death sometimes be attractive? Should it be?)

I suspect we shouldn’t discount death as an attractive option. How you weigh it up has to be relative – relative to your mood, circumstances, background and everything else. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be attractive. Is it? Ask the question.

*****

Walking. Scrub land. Perhaps an abandoned garden. Some broken concrete slabs featured. With friends. I’d visited a garden recently. For that matter, the other day I’d seen some broken up concrete. One of the friends is someone I’ve not seen for years. A strong character. Not a happy person though; someone who never comes across as pleased with how things have turned out. Looking back, I’m not sure who the other friends were. But friends.

The bunch of us are picking our way on. I’m struggling, lagging behind. I’m using walking poles or whatever it is you call them. And the end of one gets stuck in a crack in the concrete. And I can’t free myself.

*****

And that’s how I actually am. Stuck. Unable to free myself. And I’ve been stuck for years. Brain-damaged goods that seem beyond repair.

How do you decide if it’s still worth carrying on? What’s the likely gain in persisting? What’s the hoped-for value in stopping? Is it a case of escaping accumulated regrets – or dodging new regrets that loom?

*****

A harsh way to be woken-up. But not a surprise. Yes, it was just a dream, just another example of a mind at work. Rational? Irrational? However you judge things, in a sense everything we experience only exists in minds at work. And that includes making decisions about whether life or death is the most attractive option.

It’s all difficult, complicated, tangled, slippery. But it’s real and it is very obviously there – a fact to be thought about, a decision to be made. And it’s not to be ducked. You can’t not see an elephant in the room. You can’t duck it if you want to earn any respect, if only from yourself.

So, carrying on with my life – attractive? And you and your life?