If there is anything I take away from my four Philosophy courses, it is the question of existence. In the end, the question we all ask ourselves is, what is the point of living?
My Philosophy of Religion teacher asked our class this question: If taking your own life is so easy, then what’s stopping you from killing yourself right now?
That made me think. A lot. It’s just such an–to use philosophy terms–such an existential question, to quote James, a genuine option. What IS stopping us from pulling the trigger, overdosing, whatever else?
People say that it is because we want to experience the rest of life. Isn’t that an empty hope? We say we want to experience the rest of life just because we believe–we want to believe–that we still haven’t fully experienced the goodness, fullness of life. In short, we want to live some more because we hold on to the hope that nicer, better things are coming. That we will experience a happy ending, that the life we are about to experience holds better and more opportunities for us.
We are, in essence, living because we exist on the hope that life gets better. But what happens if it doesn’t?
I guess that’s why so many people kill themselves then.
