Strength

Nothing makes one want life, more than death. Seeing death, hearing about it, thinking about it, plotting it. It makes one fight that much harder to avoid it. There is a certain beauty in the contradiction of it all, a sense of accomplishment in the failure. When death is at stake…that’s when we really begin to live. It’s not just because we sense life drawing to a close, but because suddenly, the fog has been blown from our eyes, we can see everything that had been missing to that point. We have a reason to live, to fight on through the torrential hells life throws at us along the way.

We joke about it all we want, we throw out the words “kill” and “suicide” as if they were no more than children’s games, but when it comes down to the reality, the true meanings of those words and the sheer power they symbolize…the laughter stops dead at our lips. When we know that we’re treading that line, when we know that a life is at stake, that makes us fight on, that makes us work harder. It shows us the value of everything the world might be about to lose. Suddenly, it’s no longer a joke.

The nights when you stay up all night for a friend who needs you, the hours you give up of your own time for someone else, that’s when it all becomes real. There’s a certain perspective about sitting up at ridiculous hours of the morning, comforting someone through their troubles that you don’t just forget. Maybe it’s not a common thought on an everyday basis, maybe it only comes up very rarely. But at the very core, that is the true test of friendship—being there when someone needs you, being willing to make the sacrifice because they need you more than you need yourself. It sheds a new light on life that makes one realize more and more the convoluted fragility and resilience of the human existence.