Suicide is painless

If our lives are so empty and worthless, why not just end it all now?

Have you ever considered suicide? I mean considered it as a real option and not just a theory?

Theoretically, we can all imagine different ways of ending our lives. I remember the discussion we had, like so many teenagers must have had. We had momentarily escaped from the school where we were boarders and were sitting with our legs dangling over the prom at Dumpton Gap looking out to sea.

Jumping off a building would be so frightening, you probably wouldn't be able to do it. Fire would be too drawn out and painful. Throwing yourself in front of a bus or train would be messy. Ian's choice was death by drowning. "When drowning, your bodily functions eventually stop but your brain continues to function for a while. You aren't breathing, your heart has stopped but you can see through your eyes and your brain registers this. This must be such a beautiful way to leave the world."

Yukio Mishima, the Japanese author three times nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature, graduated from the renowned Tokyo University attending daily lectures while continuing with his private writing by night, which he kept secret from his disapproving father. This habit of sitting at his desk at midnight every night continued throughout his life.

Mishima took up body building at the age of 30 and carried on his thrice weekly regime until his death 15 years later.

"After the age of 40, we cannot look forward to a beautiful death. All we can look forward to is decay."

Mishima is probably most famous for his failed coup d'etat attempt and death by ritual suicide; seppuku or hari kiri; self disembowelment.

Imagine it. You are kneeling on the ground with your stomach exposed. You plunge in a dagger and draw it across. You then pull out your own guts while your nominated second decapitates you.

Mishima's second botched his multiple attempts at decapitating him, so another of Mishima's attendants had to finish the job off. This same young man also assisted in the suicide of the failed decapitator later that day.

"In the bronze age, average life expectancy for a man was 18. In the Roman period it was 20. Heaven must have been full of beautiful people then."