On Fighting to Live

Introductory notice: I know I'm a moron and forgot to post yesterday.  Blame it on the lack of a regular schedule during the summer or on the excessive amount of time I've been spending away from the computer.  I'm working on it, okay?  No, not okay, I know.  I promised I'd blog every day and I haven't been doing so, which is a problem.  Anyhow, that's not the point.  I get it, I'm trying to fix it, I'm sorry.  There.  Moving on to actual content.


"Living is easier than dying.  Until it's not."

A character in Grey's Anatomy (go figure, right?) said this.  It's had me thinking quite a bit lately.  On top of that, me being the morbid thinker I am, I've spent a good long while contemplating the question of life or death in a number of different contexts, situations.  What significance it may or may not hold.  I don't like writing about it terribly much, but I have thoughts on the subject that need sorting and the best way to sort them is generally to write, for me anyway.

Usually, it's a very easy question to answer.  There is hardly ever anything pressing enough to push an individual over that edge.  There may be enough reason to not live but it's hardly ever enough to cause one to take the necessary action to die.  Living is a default.  It is a guarantee (almost).  Death, on the other hand, is a gamble.  It requires one to put in effort and it doesn't guarantee that you'll be gone.  You might just wake up in a hospital instead and now you're ten times worse off than you were when you began.

But when you're dying and have to fight to stay alive...well, that changes everything.  Whether it's from a terminal illness over a long period of time or you're simply at risk of drowning, suddenly it's easier to continue doing nothing and die than it is to live.  In that case, you have to put in effort to maintain life.  I've never been there, I don't know how it feels, I don't know how it works, but I guess some people find the strength to fight and other people let themselves steadily slip away because finally it's easy enough that they can.

Maybe I write about death too much.  Not likely.  More accurately, I think about it too much.  I'm just tired right now, so I'm rambling.  I'm not getting anywhere anyhow, so I guess that's all.  Maybe I didn't actually have any sorting out to do.  I don't know.  Good night.