Seeing Things Through

Never kill yourself. I realize that's some of the most boilerplate, guidance-counselor, laminated-poster-in-a-high-school-hallway advice anyone could give, and I get that. But still. Never do it.

Not for any grand moral reason, not because of some karmic consequence, not even because it would make your loved ones sad, though all of those might be true. Just don’t do it because life is long and circumstances change.

The best part about being human is that these circumstances can shift at any moment. You can wake up tomorrow and find that the thing weighing you down is suddenly lighter, that the wall in front of you has crumbled without you even noticing. Other species don’t get that. A lion will always be a lion. A fish will always swim. They are at the mercy of the environment. But humans live in flux, always standing at the edge of something unknown. What feels like a dead end today might look like a detour in hindsight. Things are never fixed. They break apart, they reform into something new. And yes, your core essence will always stay the same, but the world around you can shift. And that unpredictability is what keeps people alive. There is no grand design to it, no promise that things will get better, only the fact that they can be different. And different is enough.

I read an article today about a woman who basically put a neighbourhood in Toronto on the map and made it a place people wanted to be. She helped cultivate a scene, an energy, a culture. And then she killed herself at 54. I live in this neighbourhood now, and it is strange to think that the person who helped make it what it is decided she didn’t want to be here anymore. Or anywhere.

Why? Who knows. The article didn’t really say, and even if it did, it probably wouldn’t be the real reason. The real reason is always deeper, murkier, buried under layers of things that build up over time. It is easy to say, well, people go through things. Which is true. People go through things. Life is a series of going through things, one after another, sometimes overlapping, sometimes so relentless that the idea of making it through another thing just seems like too much.

And if you are at that point, who am I to stop you? I am not God. I don’t have the answers. And maybe, for some people, it is just their time. Maybe they have looked at the world, at their life, at the road ahead, and decided they have seen enough. Maybe they really believe they have done what they needed to do. Maybe they have wrung everything they can from this place and now they are just done. There is something almost cosmic about that. Like a mission completed, a role fulfilled, a person reaching the natural endpoint of their arc. And maybe for some, that is enough. Maybe they find peace in the idea that they did what they were meant to do and that there is nothing left that they feel drawn to.

But if there is even a fraction of you that still wants to see what happens next, then that is something. If there is still something left undone, a question unanswered, a thing you want to prove, a situation you need to see through, even if it is small, then stay. Life's value isn't in some grand narrative or guaranteed happiness, but in the potential for change and unexpected moments.

Because, again, things happen. Life is long. And the people who end it early never get to know what would have happened next. Sometimes, what happens next is worse, sure. But sometimes, what happens next is the thing you never saw coming, the thing that makes you forget you were ever in that place to begin with. Sometimes what happens next is just another day, slightly different from the last. Sometimes it is something so small you don’t even notice it at first, a shift so minor it only makes sense in hindsight. Sometimes what happens next is waking up one day and realizing you feel lighter, that the grief no longer claws at your insides the way it once did, that the thing you thought you would never recover from has faded into something bearable, something you can live with. And you don’t get to know unless you are here.

So stay. See things through.

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