Why wait?

The title, of course, takes its name from the famous suicide note of George Eastman when he wrote the reason for taking his life as “My work here is finished, why wait?”

I have often wondered at the irony. Almost all of us blunder around life trying to find a reason for all that we do. Looking as an outsider at the melee that our life, haven’t we all, in secret or in the open, despaired at finding some purpose in what we do. If we have to be a little poetic, don't we wonder for what are all our tears, our hopes, our desires, our jealousies, our camaraderie, our romances and everything that makes up the small jigsaws?

I sometimes feel that our mind and our consciousness boggles at the vastness of our existence, which is why we find comfort in the small mercies of life – a person who loves us and a person who allows us to love him or her, our family (for the lucky ones who have a completely normal family i.e.) and the present circle of friends (which have a higher turnover than ever before) and willingly ascribe our time and thought to targets we set for ourselves – passing the next exam, marriage, retirement and so on. This prevents us from simply breaking apart at the realization of our smallness in the onrush of history.

So when Eastman kills himself because he has finished his work, I have to admire him. It takes genius to know what our purpose is and it takes guts to admit to oneself that our usefulness is over and that’s all that there is to it. Maybe the famed human tenacity is nothing but clinging on and hoping for the unknown, still trying to find purpose in the face of onslaught of death.

Which is when I wonder. If I ever face what Eastman faced at the time he decided his fate, how would I like to move on, bring on the final scene so to say?

First of all I want to do it alone; jumping off a bridge or a building or stepping in front of a train is absolutely out of the question. First of all because I think I would like to greet death in solitude and also because I want an elegant death – if I have taken care of myself while I lived, why the hell would I want to depart mangled or smashed.

Secondly since it’s a very pre-determined objectively thought out decision (I am doing a Eastman, remember!), I would like to prepare myself well, which means I want to kill myself on a full stomach; since I like to eat the good stuff, depending on what I feel like eating then, I would go to the best place that offers it (and if I hesitate, I would suddenly remember saving money makes no sense anymore :)).

I will then write a nice moving farewell letter to all those I love and hope they understand why I must do what I must do. I think I might like to write a poem but will take a call then; if I feel that the whole killing myself drama is getting too melodramatic, I think I will finish with the letter but write a poem anyway and keep that as a backup (what if the original letter flies out of the window or something; I want my last words fame too!!)

And then, I would read “The Gift of the Magi” and remind myself that life is beautiful because people like the two people in the story actually exist (and flatter myself by saying that I am one of them – er almost was!!).

Then when it is late night and everything is silent, I would play Dylan and die. My only wish then would be to die at the exact moment that “Mr Tambourine Man” fades away.

Well, takes all kinds to make a blog don’t it? ;)

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