No Country For Young Men

My friend’s brother committed suicide the other day. He was a tall, blond and blue-eyed introvert with a 140 IQ. Jumped off a ledge. By all accounts, he was a genuinely decent young man.

This tragic story took place in the West and almost everyone I know also knows a friend who killed themselves in one way or another other there. Some know several. Reminds me of that song:

But the Slavlands aren’t really all that different.

News about suicides by drunk driving, drug OD’ing and so on roll in like a slow-motion newsreel. With so many ways to kill oneself slowly and comfortably afforded to the average young man, it’s actually a surprise that many still opt for the direct, brutal and old-fashioned method.

According to the young lad’s Catholic family, he is burning in Hell now, which adds salt to the gaping wound that his departure left in their lives.

But I think that it’s actually our world that is another world’s Hell.

I want to take the opportunity to state that I’ve only ever once felt truly suicidal in my life and I never will be again. I’m world-weary, yes. Disgusted by what I see around me, true. I’m perfectly content with the possibility of nuclear annihilation as well.

People will spout platitudes about the beauty of nature as proof that this world is actually pretty neat. Me, I don’t deny that nature is beautiful. So is a woman’s naked body. Kids giggling and screaming with glee as they run around on the playground. A dog waving its tail with joy and grinning when it sees you.

All faint shadows of something higher and even more beautiful though.

And this world takes a cruel pleasure in giving us a taste of beauty and then ripping it away from us.

A long-lost national golden age that seems to grow ever more distant as the years go on with no hope of revival. A fiance that decided to move to Brooklyn to “find herself” instead of starting a family with us. Our favorite pine grove felled by a corrupt local official looking to make a quick buck. Political propaganda that turns a family inside out by pitting its members against one another. A travel ban that separates us from our friends and forces us to watch helpless as we grow ever distant from one another. A friend hooked on drugs who is committing an excruciating slow-motion suicide right before our eyes.

I can practically see a cackling deity moving us around like pawns on a grand chessboard, stimulating feelings of great hope and ecstatic pleasure only to snatch them all away and plunge us into the depths of despair at the thought of losing all that we cared about, forever.

Worse, I’m convinced that death isn’t the escape that some people think that it is and that the only way out of this hell is to organize a prison break of the soul. My friend’s brother will be back, and he’ll be forced to struggle all over again through another terrestrial life, although he will probably be demoted to a lower caste on his next go-around as a penalty.

Maybe a Turk or something.

Suicide probably isn’t the worst thing in the world though. Soldiers often prefer it to being taken captive by their enemies. It used to be seen as the height of honorable behavior by our culture, in certain situations. Giving up the struggle however, in this life or the next, is something else. That is why we, the living, struggle on. Like Odysseus. Trying to make our way home and getting waylaid along the way. Pitted up against forces greater than ourselves that care nothing for us and who conspire to make us suffer.

Only the struggle is real, friends.

RIP to all our brothers and sisters who got run down and swallowed by the demonic hyenas that nip at our heels in this life. The chase is over for them, for now. But our struggle continues. The pack turns its attention to us next, jaws red with blood from their latest kill, leering and laughing.

We fight to acquire the strength and acumen to stay one step ahead of the chomping jaws of evil. Never give up. Nurse within yourself instead, a burning desire to flip the tables on our oppressors. Let every loss you experience in your life or in those of the people who are near and dear to you act as a fuel log that you toss into the iron furnace of your will. Let it drive you to get better. To get stronger. To embolden you to defiantly spit into the leering face of the Evil that runs this world.