Quote:
Originally Posted by Qilin
When it all comes down to it, life doesn't really amount to much. You might exist today, but tomorrow you could very well be gone. Once you accept that, it's not really a big deal. The trick is to dissociate yourself from practically everything. As I come to realize how insignificant I am relative to the grand scale of the universe, my own passing seems like such a small thing in comparison. In it's own way, death represents the demise of of a single universe among infinitely many.
Don't get me wrong. I enjoy my life. I revel in the depths of my own sensory experiences. I drown myself in emotional euphoria. Above all, I love being able to consciously experience it all. The capacity for self-awareness and self-regulation, more than feelings, emotions, or morals, are the things I value most as a living being. I value them to the point that I perceive the absence of thought to be the same thing as being dead. But at the same time, it is that very consciousness that tells me that I would not value life to this extent without acknowledging its very transience and emptiness. Ironically, it is that apparent pointlessness that makes life even more meaningful to behold. Life is just like a bubble, and once it pops, there will be no time to grieve; one will simply cease to be.
On this topic, I recall a particularly memorable scene from one of my favorite manga:
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Do answer me this though. If you and your life are as insignificant as you make them sound, and if every other life is just as meaningless and pointless, what makes you worthy of living? What will make me not want to kill you or any other living being the same way I'd kill a fly? You have just degraded your life's value slightly above the point of non-existence and in so doing, elevated the opposite natural event, death, to godlike status. And you placed this into my hands. Or do you think any human punishment, even my death, can now dissuade me from killing you or anyone else, when all our lives are just as pointless, whether it spans 10 or 100 years?
The only thing staying the hand holding the power that you have so nicely handed over to me is that I value my life as much as I acknowledge and respect death as the absolute and final equator, a belated justice at the end of one's days. My life has both meaning and purpose beyond existing for existence's sake, and in projecting that same value onto you, I consider you worthy of living or existing, therefore I wouldn't kill you. For now.