EndGameNYC

What's the point of doing anything? "In the end," we don't know anything about "the end" until we get there. The point is to stick around long enough to get there.

No one is born with a built-in purpose in life, and though many have tried, we cannot borrow it from someone else. We may get away with it for a time, but it will never fit well enough to call it our own. No one can give it to you either.

I don't know you very well at all, but it seems that at a very young age you've experienced failure, frustration, and disappointment and all the other great things that come with living an alcoholic life, the sole purpose of which is to destroy ourselves, and to hell with anyone we take with us. But suicide? Really? You were just a kid a few years ago, and you're ready to give up?

When I read comments like yours, I start to think that maybe there is some purpose to my life. But there isn't, so I just keep on moving. Life sucks, and even when it doesn't, it's very hard. Yet people keep on going. Does there really need to be a reason why? Are you so certain that what comes after taking your own life, if there's anything at all, will be so much better than living out your life? I've got some things in my life that are meaningful to me, but I may never know what my Purpose is, even if I insist that I know what it is. Having survived all the suffering I've generated for myself across the decades, I'm okay with that. But, "in the end," is it knowing we crave? Or believing?

Though I'm certain you've had your fair share of suffering in your life, and maybe more, you haven't been around long enough to know what it is to repeatedly fail, to have your own thinking taunt you to the extent that you want to kill yourself, to feel crazy wherever you go, to not "fit in," to feel so alone that even loneliness deserts you, and then work through all of that, come to acknowledge existence for what it is, regardless of both inevitable and avoidable suffering, start to take seriously the unhealthy parts of you that keep on knocking you down and, "in the end," get to a better place.

I've witnessed powerful resistance to the reality that, both here and IRL, and one that I've written about many times, that the very act and the continued struggle to make life better, or to simply make it suck less, is transformational, and reliably brings us to a better place. I now just take it for granted that this is how life works, and that there isn't any compelling argument against it. The only requirement for success is to stick with it and, even then, that doesn't guarantee that we'll get what we want. Today, I'm extremely grateful for the things I wanted, or thought I wanted, but never got. If we do nothing else, by getting involved in the struggle, it's possible that we'll get something even better than we wanted, like wisdom. Or generosity. Or simple human decency. Or a drive to help others who have even less than we do.

As human beings, we are both incredibly persistent, and outlandishly notorious for how easily we quit, particularly in relationship to all that we can experience over the course of a lifetime, all that we can learn to help ourselves to help people who need help. The surest way of surviving chronic suffering is to take care of someone who needs more help than we do. Few people seem to believe this, and even fewer act on it. We're too busy convincing ourselves-- and anyone who'll listen -- that no one has it worse than we do.

I don't know or don't recall your history, but what have you done to make things better? To make your life worth living? Maybe just as important, what haven't you done?

"In the end," we aren't what's happened to us. We're what we choose to become.