Bliss
“Suicidal” isn’t the right word for what I feel; I merely find existence a nuisance. I’m not going to swiftly “off” myself and leave behind misery and grief to those that I care about, because I have no desire to actively kill myself whatsoever. Conversely, should I get into bed tonight, fall asleep, and never wake up, I would be happy. Although, “happy” also isn’t the right word for that emotion.
I am at an age where most of my peers have at least one child, some with a second on the way. They seem content with the life they have created and for the lifestyle they have created for themselves, but I struggle to understand why. As much as they may try to persuade me to have a child of my own, at this point in my life I do not think having a child would bring happiness — nor should the burden of my happiness be the responsibility of a child who has to contend with seeking their own. “Be a good girl, you’ll make mummy and daddy happy,” they say. A pressurized container of life from the get-go.
What’s more, I think the world would be a better place if I had never been born. Not in a melodramatic sense, because I consider myself a kind and good person, but the state of consciousness brings with it a palpable awareness of suffering, to which I would prefer not to be privy. It would have been much better, I think, to have remained an unconscious cell; unknowingly floating around, unaware of human traits like empathy, hunger, or ambition.
You may well argue (and rightly so), that if one were to never be born, they would miss out on all the beauty of the world: of nature, of kindness, and of love! But my rebuttal would be that “missing out” would have nothing to do with it. You can’t “miss” something that you never knew existed. True, I would be oblivious to joy, love, and beauty, but in return I would have no knowledge of sadness, hate, and ugliness. I would also not be able to let people down, or even let myself down, largely due to the fact that being able to disappoint anyone is a function of a world in which external expectations are set upon us. There would be no pressure to do well in school, no presumption that I would become successful (whatever that may look like), no need to pretend to be a capitalistic cog within an industry for the majority of my life, simply in hopes of earning a man-made currency that I could then spend on materialistic things or even animalistic necessities. Albert Camus said that, “There is only one really serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” He is, of course, right; but, I would like to toss in my two cents—there is only one really serious existential problem, and that is birth.
Even Buddha himself said that life is suffering and that it stems from worldly cravings and wants. Well, what better way to escape from the concept of "samsara” than to never enter it in the first place? According to the tenets of Buddhism, nirvana is the starting point and we all have to work our way back to it, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But what of all the suffering we leave behind when we inevitably become dirt once again? The physical, emotional, and spiritual toll we leave on the world…Is that worth it to just end up where we started? (Or rather, the state in which we lived before “starting” was forced upon us). After seeing all the beauty and ugliness the world has to offer, I for one would have liked to remain in my insentient state.
“What a sad, lonely life,” you must be thinking. But I’d like to remind you of two well-known adages: “Misery loves company,” and “Ignorance is bliss.”
Cover Photo by Eric Espino. Edited by Caitlin Andrews.
