People                      Merci Charlotte               15 August 2024


   Chère Charlotte,

   A year without you has flown by so quickly, though it wasn't easy at
   first.  Each day then felt like a year, but what of it now.  I dare
   to assume that no one has it easy in such situations, and you didn't
   either, having gone through it before me.  After all, it is one of
   the most painful experiences in a person's life, just like the death
   of loved ones, although comparing them now seems inappropriate.
   However, I have experienced both the death of dear ones and their
   voluntary withdrawal from my life, and thus I feel entitled to speak
   on this matter.

   I promised not to write letters to you anymore, although I broke that
   promise once, maybe twice.  Am I breaking it now?  I don't know,
   since I won't be sending this letter to you.  It will simply wait for
   you here, and perhaps in a moment of sorrow, you might remember me
   when you find yourself here, reading the lines of this letter, which
   I would never dare to send to you.  What right do I have now?  And I
   bear some guilt for what happened, or rather, how it happened.  In
   hindsight, I realize that in our farewell, I behaved poorly in some
   respects, but please forgive him, he was hurt.  And forgive me, who
   still tries to take responsibility for his actions.

   I now live in a world without you.  In a year, I have grown
   accustomed to this world and, more importantly, accepted it as a new
   reality.  You are now just part of my past, a bright memory.  You are
   not in this world anymore.  In a sense, you have died for me.  Died
   because René and Charlotte have been obliterated by the present; they
   are now represented by an essence.  And maybe it's for the best.  I
   will remember this as one of the most memorable and vivid periods of
   my life.  And, damn it, I sincerely regret that I didn't accept the
   end of this era with dignity, succumbing to my emotions.  I am human.
   I sincerely regret it, but I no longer blame myself.  On behalf of
   my past self, however, I apologize because my present self fully
   bears responsibility for my past self.

   I don't know why you're reading these lines now.  Perhaps many people
   will read them, but not you.  That is possible.  However, if you are
   reading, surely you are having a hard time now as well.  Life is
   arranged in such a way that anything can happen at any time.  All of
   it can be endured.  I have endured a lot and will endure more, so
   perhaps my words and my experience can ease your fate a little.
   Lately, I have thought a lot about the nature of human suffering and
   now find it fundamental, without which human existence as a species
   would not be possible.  We are simply not designed to be constantly
   happy.  Evolution is almost indifferent to happiness.  We cannot live
   without ever suffering.  It is part of our nature.

   The picture is bleak, and it becomes even darker considering that few
   people allow themselves such reflections, because these thoughts are
   terrifying.  They can cause considerable pain on their own.  However,
   by indulging in them, I finally understood how to live.  Not why, I
   draw your specific attention to that, because it is easy to answer
   the question "why": human life has no inherent attribute like
   meaning; it is not endowed with it from birth.  Kurt Vonnegut seemed
   to best describe humans in his books, portraying them as walking
   chemical flasks in which various reactions occur from time to time.
   That's all of us.  But there is no meaning in it.  That is the price
   we had to pay for freedom.

   There is no meaning.  And there cannot be any universal meaning; that
   would greatly limit a person.  However, there can be meanings.  There
   may be many small meanings.  Writing a weblog entry, editing a video,
   composing a new piece of music, travelling to Görlitz.  None of these
   components are self-sufficient; for instance, I cannot say that a
   trip to a particular city or video editing alone can be the meaning
   of my life.  Of course not.  It would be strange if the meaning of my
   life was a trip to a specifically designated city.  However, not
   individually, but collectively, the meanings have meaning.  One
   cannot construct a Big Meaning from them, but they make our lives a
   bit more bearable.

   So, I say that it is easy to answer the question "why", because the
   answer is simple: "for nothing".  It is more important for a person
   to answer the question "how", because our lives are mainly built
   around this question, not around the question "why."  Why?  Because
   whatever we do, we mostly do it to make life more bearable.  To
   reduce the amount of suffering.  And that is all life!  Hence, it
   would be strange to ask, "why."  Why does a person not want to
   suffer?  This question seems as complex as, for example, why the
   Universe exists.  How is its existence even possible?  Why is it
   there?  I do not know.  But there are many interesting things in it.
   And we do something with them.  And we ask "what to do with them" and
   "how," not "why."  Most of the time.

   Why do we not want to suffer?  Suffering is hard.  It is really hard.
   It is unpleasant.  Every person finds their own way to cope with
   this hardship, and I too found consolation for myself in the last
   year.  My life becomes much more bearable when I help someone.  Help,
   making another person's life a bit more bearable too.  It doesn't
   matter how exactly it happens: for instance, I relocated my family
   from Russia.  They were terrorized there, my brother and mother lived
   in fear.  Perhaps I do not fully realize the importance of what I
   did, and maybe I never will, but it made my life easier.  My life
   became a little less unbearable when I helped my family.

   Or, say, a friend who found themselves in trouble and needed support.
   This happened more than once in my memory, and it was never easy.
   It was hard, just as it is hard to experience another person's pain
   yourself.  But every time after such instances, my life became a
   little less unbearable.  I felt involved and felt that, even though I
   found myself in this world involuntarily, I could help other people
   who also found themselves here not by their own choice.  I always
   found it terribly unfair: a person does not have the option to veto
   their parents' decision when they are born into the world.  They do
   not even choose their name at the beginning of their journey.

   I hold an unpopular point of view; I am an antinatalist.  I consider
   the creation of new lives a great crime against humanity because by
   creating them, we inadvertently multiply suffering.  It is the
   greatest act of violence a person is capable of.  I would never
   conceive a child.  If I had my way, I would only adopt someone to
   make their suffering less.  But this also involves many challenging
   nuances, and for now, I need to sort myself out.  It seems a paradox
   because making others' lives a bit more bearable is both the least
   and, at the same time, the greatest thing we can do.

   And you, like all people, bear the mark of the life we live.  A mark
   that obliges suffering.  I don't want you to suffer.  And the only
   effective way not to entirely rid yourself of suffering but to make
   this life a little less unbearable is to make other people's lives
   less unbearable.  To kill the anger towards the unjust and harsh,
   cruel structure of the world and accept the fact that we are all its
   unwilling captives, deprived of even a hint of finding the meaning of
   existence on this giant cold rock, lost somewhere in the backwater of
   the Universe.  Accept this fact and help other sufferers who need
   help.  All of us and each of us.  Even if it seems that there is no
   strength left for it.





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