Looking for a Reason to Die

·       If you are thinking of harming yourself or others please call 988 immediately or email me directly at kane@thetomlins.net.  This article is a celebration of life (in a roundabout way) and I promise you waking up tomorrow is better than any other option available to you right now.

I have and will continue to joke often that I will never ever be a good writer because I am unwilling to bare my soul and hold it up for mass critique which is necessary for good literature in my opinion, Hemingway is and always will be the standard.  Those who are willing to do so are truly heroes in our time and I thank them all.  But maybe one random Saturday morning an emotionless old man in his 40s can ignore his nature for once.

There’s a segment of the population sometimes called “noble puppies” by Plato, “warriors” by everyone else, etc. that never expected to be here in the long run in all honesty.  I didn’t plan to die young, but I never expected to live this long either.  The literature that inspired me as a child and into my young adult life was kind of dark in retrospect.  “Here I am, send me”, “Greater love hath no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (or her), “the impediment to action advances action.  What stands in the way becomes the way”, “the world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry”, etc. 

I can honestly say two contrary things about my life to date: I wanted to experience the hardest things I could endure (and unwittingly try to prove I would live forever), and I was looking for a good reason to die.  I think part of the suicide epidemic of Veterans is partly from misguided people like me (disclosure, I have no formal training to indicate this), and I don’t know how to help.  But I will try to explain my feelings (yuck) on the subject. 

We logically know in some small way we are finite, so humans logically want the most bang for our buck, and what is more expensive than your life?  I wanted to serve a cause greater than myself because I think in retrospect I wanted to die for a noble cause. While that is an end without a means, damn if it isn’t easy to envision and plan for because you don’t!  Who wouldn’t want to be known as an honorable person, taken too young by XYZ circumstance long before the bills pile up and the pain of life and being old sinks in?

My opportunity to find such a cause came around on 9/11/01, and so I went to war, but not as a regular Joe, as a Military Diver.  Why?  Because it was the most dangerous thing I could think of doing.  I was writing my obituary proactively because no one wants to waste their life either.  We want to be heroes, and heroes have to be awesome, and typically young.  “Better to die a hero or you will live long enough to be the villain” as Batman used to say.  Who doesn’t want to be Batman after all?

So I went off looking for a good reason to die.  But over and over, better men than me paid that price instead.  And suddenly I was old and alive without planning for such an unjust result.  I told my dad recently that I don’t know how to handle living life in “easy mode”, I have more money than I need, more time than I expected, and a determination not to waste either.  But I can’t find a good reason to die, and so I need a better reason to live.

Nihilism is easy, humanity is hard.  It’s so fucking hard it makes you into a grumpy bald old man.  But life is worth it all; I got my dream wife, house, car, and family all undeservedly.  But I can’t waste it, what is more precious than being middle-aged, loved, and important to your family?  Fuck Batman, I’m a Dad.  The mission isn’t to die for a just cause (although that is noble as hell), it is to live for the people who need you.  Death comes for us all eventually.  If you want to serve, you need to be of service.

Looking for a reason to live, isn’t that way more challenging and ultimately so much more rewarding?