“On suicide”,
Suicide is a funny thing. Not funny as in a joke, funny as in a funny smell. It applies an absolute solution to a relatively tailored problem most of the time. In logic we would say that it’s ∀.
The main reason I don’t kill myself is reluctance through fear. The second reason is because it guarantees that I get reduced to my most palatable properties almost overnight. Essentialism, essentially. I can imagine my eulogy now:
Ryan was a talented young man who departed too soon on [date of suicide]. His light shined on all who knew him, whether classmate or teacher, demonstrating his breadth of knowledge from the most impressive to the most obscure. His friends enjoyed their time with him, a kind, hilaroius spirit. He is missed.
Actually this makes more sense as an obituary, I mixed them up.
Based on general sensibility and a passion project for class I can roughly outline what would happen were I to kill myself:
Immediate and pronounced grief from my mother, the real person to suffer from this.
Statements of grief from various classmates and people who knew me, and who I would be surprised to see caring about me in such a way but who did not express their “care’ when I was alive, making it useless in any meaningful sense; potential copycat suicide attempts, as seen in other schools, but unlikely.
Some kind of GoFundMe for a funeral; parents of former classmates help out and we reach the goal and then some.
Funeral; the type of eulogy I outlined.
A few years down the line, I become one of my classmates’ answers to an r/AskReddit post titled “[Serious] What was ‘the incident’ at your high school?”
All steps involve some form of essentialism. Like I said in “On relationships”, they would mourn the most palatable qualities I showed/distilled, not me inandof myself.
Maybe Minka has something to say on this.
Ah, they’re a relief. ♦