My Friend Steve

Steve is not the kind of guy who is going to play up his disaffection with life for sympathy from others. He is pretty stoic emotionally. It's not like he is trying to get people to beg him to continue along a course he is no longer interested in. When he is done he is done. And if you think you are going to go to Steve and convince him to live for all the 'right reasons' you are wasting your breath. Don't bother.

This is how Steve has put it to me:

'The last thing I want people to think of me is that I am some sort of emotional basketcase. I didn't just have a bad day, Deej, and then get all emotionally unbalanced to the point of becoming suicidal. I didn't just forget to take my meds man!! Heck, I have meditated on the nature ... the meaning... the significance of Death as long as I can remember. I know I am going to die. I know this body-mind is not made for Eternity. I understand it is all going to fade away---with a whimper or a shout. The question for me is how do I want to go out.

Do I want to let cancer take me unsuspectingly? Do I wait for the Bus to hit me as I absent-mindedly cross the street one day? Do I wait for a terrorist attack with Dick Cheney out on a hunting trip? Tell me Deej... how do you want to die: by your hand or by someone else's... or this vague thing we call 'Fate'?"

I know Steve has thought about Death and Dying alot. We both did for many years. We would discuss the best and worst ways to Die. It as if we were Stars and had chosen to become Supernovas: to go out with a bang! To make a statement in dying. And to, above all, make it anything but an accident.

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Steve's rant to me last Saturday also included something about why he was contemplating his own impending voluntary exit from the World-Stage. I remember him saying something about us (humanity, I took him as meaning) needing to make a distinction between disaffection with Life as a whole and disaffection with Culture/Civilization---i.e., the human-generated constructs we all live within, as, and through.

I wish I could remember exactly what he said, as it was truly inspired at the time. I'll try to recapitulate his thoughts as best I can. And Steve, I am sorry if I mess up---you'll just have to join Zaadz and speak for yourself!!  ; o )

'Deej, do you think everyone that chooses the voluntary exit does so because they are 'life-haters?' Do you really think that acts of suicide are statements against Life inthe form of Planets and Solar Systems and Stars and Flowers and Rivers and Streams? Do you really suppose that someone is thinking.... 'Fuck you Yellowstone! You suck and I'll be glad to never see your face again?'

That would be silly, wouldn't it Deej? That would be stupid, right?

'Well... yeah.... of course.'

'Yet what is the rhetoric against voluntary exits from the world? Isn't it that everyone who chooses that path must hate Life in all its forms? Isn't the rhetoric such that it makes it sound or seem like anyone who take the path of the voluntary exit must be a player-hater? That they hate or despise Life, period? That they don't want to exist, at all, right?'

'Yeah... I totally get what you are saying here. That there needs to be a distinction made between existence-as-such and existence-within-systems.'

'Well, if you want to put it like that, yes, sure. I would put it like this, though: that suicide is not a blasphemy against God and Life and Spirit and Source and Suchness. People don't get fed up with the Buddha and Christ!! They are choosing to exit the realms of Mara and the Anti-Christ Deej!!' 

'It's like they are trying to unplug from the Matrix.'

'Leave it to you to bring in the pop-culture reference! But yeah.... it is not like those taking the path of the voluntary exit are trying to not to exist period. They are oftentimes just making a statement to Civilization and Culture that as Primordial Beings they will not exist under certain conditions.... or, as you put it.... they cannot exist-within-certain-systems.'

'It's kind of like ecology, isn't it?'

'What do you mean?'

'We know that every creature requires the prior existence of a certain habitat (ecology) in order to not just survive.... but to thrive. That apart from that habitat they cannot exist.'

'Yeah Deej.... that's it.... exactly! You do still get it! Sweet, parenthood has not completely deluded you!'

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That's my friend Steve. I wish everyone could be so lucky as to know a pain-in-the-ass like him!!!    ; o )   Love ya Steve!!