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The Monopoly of Suffering

Those who commit suicide have a pathological attraction for death, which they try to resist consciously but which they cannot totally suppress. Life in them is so unbalanced that no rational argument could set it right. There are no rational suicides, following to a logical conclusion a meditation on nothingness and the futility of life. […] No one commits suicide for external reasons, only because of inner disequilibrium. Under similar adverse circumstances, some are indifferent, some are moved, some are driven to suicide. To be obsessed with suicide, there must be such inner agony that all self-imposed barriers break and nothing is left but a catastrophic dizziness, a strange and powerful whirlwind. How could suicide be an assertion of life? They say that it is caused by disappointments, which implies that you have desired life, that you had expectations which it did not fulfill. A false dialectic! As if the suicide did not live before he died, did not have hopes, ambitions, pain. Essential to suicide is the belief that you can no longer live, not because of whim but because of a terrifying inner tragedy. Is the inability to live an assertion of life? Any suicide is impressive. So I wonder why people still look for reasons and justifications, why the even deprecate it. Nothing is more ridiculous than to make a hierarchy of suicides and divide them between the noble and the vulgar. Taking one’s life is sufficiently impressive to forestall any petty hunt for motives. […] I admire only two types of people: the potentially mad and the potential suicide. Only they inspire me with awe, because only they are capable of great passions and great spiritual transfigurations. Those who live positively, full of self-assurance, content with their past, present, and future, have only my respect.

Cioran, On the Heights of Despair