Painless
Because I’ve been acutely depressed for a while now. Those who might be concerned, please don’t. Just a passage I want to share.
From: Mitchell, David. Cloud Atlas. New York: Random House, 2004.
The love-lorn, the cry-for-helpers, all mawkish tragedians who give suicide a bad name are the idiots who rush it, like amateur conductors. A true suicide is a paced, disciplined certainty. People pontificate, "Suicide is selfishness." Career churchmen . . . go a step further and call it a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reasons: to evade fingers of blame, to impress one’s audience with moral fiber, to vent anger, or just because one lacks the necessary suffering to sympathize. Cowardice is nothing to do with it–suicide takes a considerable courage. Japanese have the right idea. No, what’s selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching. The only selfishness lies in ruining a stranger’s days by forcing ‘em to witness a grotesqueness.
