Harbinger: A Journal of Art & Literature | 2018-2019

WHY I LIVE
George A. Stern Jr.
Suicide. I’ve considered it, a place I never expected my sensation-loving, life-savoring
self to come to. But when said sensations pale into fleeting, manufactured distractions
from a stagnant life with all the appeal of days-old guinea pig rejects, it is easier than you
might think to be seduced by the idea of exerting one final bit of indisputable, irreversible
control over your life - and to some degree your story - of ending it on your terms.
How seriously did I consider it? Seriously enough to be thankful that the only weapons
in my home are kitchen knives and Khali sticks. This place I reached: it’s the instant in
juggling when you and only you know that all your balls - the ones in the air, the ones
you’re making such a show-and-tell of putting up - are out of your control and coming
down in an inglorious, inevitable cascade; it’s that brink of a moment when you think
that perhaps the death of unrealized promise is preferable to a long life of breaking them,
disappointing yourself and others; it’s the chasm between who you could - should? - be
and who you are that whispers echoingly of the might-have-been advantage over the
never-was. My father is particularly eloquent and impassioned in advancing the theory
that I’ve consigned myself to such instances of debilitating hopelessness by rejecting the
Christian faith and its covenant-keeping, miracle- working, eternal life-granting god. To
hear him tell it, every apostate and nonbeliever is a twitch of divine mercy away from
having the proud citadels of our contrary minds shattered Nebuchadnezzar-style, leaving
us to wander witless and despondent, rooting through trash cans for our supper. But I
never did live for either God or afterlife, even when I believed in both so hard my dream
job was to be a missionary in “Africa.”
Nor can I say that ambition, hope, stubbornness or sheer habit provide particularly
insurmountable attachments to life. No, what keeps me alive is remembering that I live
to love and that loving requires neither degree, nor status, nor especial material success; it
requires only that I am alive to give it to those who need it.
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