Nature

I have had enough.

The thought of staying alive has been crawling onto my body, stabbing my skin until it bleeds, and nevermore I wish to see more of the world that keeps on betraying my beliefs and feelings.

I have lost appetite for this thing called “life.” Surely I am contented enough to die; when someone says they are content, I scorn them, for contentment is not supposed to be subjected to life, but subjected to death.

If you do not wish to die, you are still dissatisfied, so to speak. You want to see more of the world so your satisfaction remains dormant.

Dissatisfaction is very human, very peculiar—people cannot be forever satisfied by their own goals, by their own achievements, and they will keep on living to dream more and achieve more. This thing called “contentment” does not exist in their dictionary, no matter how grateful they are, they still betray their own words.

Indeed. The truly contented people are the ones who want to take their own lives.

They have had enough of life. They are satisfied. They do not wish to see more of the world. Contentment is such a wonderful thing, and we often teach ourselves with it, one after another, that it is the greatest happiness possible in life.

To be contented is to become happy.

Therefore, since I want to die, I am happy.

I am happy enough to die.

I am twenty-seven years old, but it feels like I have lived long enough. I do not believe that age is correlated with experience; sometimes younger people have more experiences than older people. It is not about how long you lived, but how much you experienced.

As a twenty-seven-year-old man, I feel like I have lived one hundred years. The density of my experiences is tremendous, compressed in those mere twenty-seven years.

I do not want to experience more of the world. That may sound like I know everything, but in the end, I actually know nothing, just like the universe that is ever-so expanding, once you reach beyond the universe: what follows after everything is nothing.

I cannot do this anymore.

I held hands with a woman that was also the same as me. Even though she was younger than me, I could see the wrinkles on her face, masking it with a smile that I had never seen before, a smile that most humans could not ever imitate.

The river crashed against the rocks here and there, foams evaporating as they ran down the fall, and the woman and I gazed at them almost despairingly. We were scared to die, natch, but we had gained the determination to do so.

We sat on the riverbank. The waterfall was so loud we had to louden our voices. “Art created by man can never beat art created by God,” the woman said. “There is something about nature that keeps us enthralled by its beauty. Most artists derive their inspiration from it, describing the flowers and birds poetically, and strange enough as it is, humans do not ever grow tired of nature.”

I looked at her. “Maybe. Though, of course, nature is not something they will look upon when they want to see something new. They usually go for art created by humans to digest how others feel and think. Suppose the world is a book and God is the author—can you read God’s mind?”

“No. But I can discern the meaning behind nature.”

“Like simplicity? Since humans always create something so complicated?”

“Almost. Nature can be complicated more than you think. There are so many species we have not discovered yet, the wonders of the world that we have not tapped into, so I guess the true meaning of life is the art of discovery.”

“Discovery?” To be honest, I did not understand what she meant. People love to ask about the meaning of life, or other people roll their eyes to this question since they have become painfully pragmatic and decided not to overthink nature.

Pragmatic people often think they know everything.

That they decided to stop thinking about the world so deeply.

According to my lover’s belief, the true meaning of life is to discover, so I am guessing that she was relating to science and philosophy.

When I gave it a thought, that was when I finally understood that humans did love discovering new things in life, and putting them on textbooks, marking them as factual, then the process goes on and on, a repetition that humans long for.

They want to see more of the world.

But.

I did not.

I did not want to discover anymore.

The woman, whom I have loved since the days of yore, looked at me and smiled. She could have read my mind or read my facial expression since her smile suggested that I should at least become more positive about the art of life.

“We should kill ourselves positively,” she said. “Do not frown like that.” With her fingers, she lifted the sides of my mouth, and I must have looked funny. “We should be grateful that nature itself is the one who is going to kill us. Is it not wonderful?”

I nodded. She released my cheeks and now I was smiling. She chuckled and gazed at the waterfalls again. “Well. Shall we go?”

“Yes. We shall.” We stood and held hands together. We perched on the curb of the river, staring into the waters that ragingly streamed down the cliff. Cold water spritzed onto our faces and body. Once we stepped into the waters, we would be instantly carried along with them.

We crossed the river by settling on the rocks. She almost lost balance and I held her tight. We stood on this slippery boulder, then we faced the skies, overlooking the waterfall.

It was beautiful and exhilarating.

Threatened by the dangers of nature.

And at that moment, when I looked at her, she was crying. She had told me to smile earlier, and now she broke her own promise. It was when I wanted to read into her that I stared at her for a few minutes. She did not look at me. Tears went along with the river.

I do not want to die.

I do not want to die.

I could hear those thoughts running in her head. God, please save me. I cannot control myself. Will you also be so kind to save my lover, too? I want us to live. I want to live a happy life with him. I do not want this.

Her actions contradicted her thoughts. She was about to jump when I shouted, “Wait!”

She looked at me. “…Have you changed your mind?”

“Yes. I have changed my mind. I do not want to die either. I want us to live a happy life, too!”

“Is that so…” She smiled in pain. “But I cannot go on living like this.”

“I will make you happy, I promise you that—”

“I am sorry.”

“Huh?”

“I love you.” She jumped out of the boulder, still holding my hand, bringing me along with her. Before I knew it, the waters engulfed my body, I wanted to shout at her with questions endlessly flourishing in my head, but I could not since I was drowning.

I was finally convinced that women are hard to understand even if you have the ability to read their minds.

I thought I had understood her perfectly well—that she did not want to die—that she wanted to keep on living—and I answered her wish by reciprocating her thoughts.

I got complacent.

It was so weak-willed of me not to steel my resolve.

Or maybe I was the one who truly did not want to die?