My friend wants to kill herself.

Usually people who are plagued by other people want to kill them. There isn’t much logic to support that, as one has to ask, Is life possible if there’s nobody else there?

If you’re combatting your own identity, can you solve your problems by not being someone?

If you kill yourself to remove the problematics of being a self, there’s a built-in contradiction: you won’t be there to enjoy life once “you” are gone.

What is possible? Can you see who you are to the roots, and release the attachment to being that one? The belief that this is possible underwrites effort and underwrites enduring the suffering during the process of self-illumination.

It seems that killing yourself is a form of ego-inflation. In fact your suffering is infinitesimal.

The sense that I am a speck in an infinite cosmos can be liberating. How can I take my concerns seriously?

Yet here’s a paradox. From that standpoint, sub specie aeternitatis, our little lives are nothing—we’re ants on a hill of beans or something. At the same time, my life is infinitely precious—to “me”!

What other creature has the potential of man? Our little lives, “rounded with a sleep,” contain the seeds of awakened blooms!

Our efforts in this “vale of tears” should be to awaken ourselves and all sentient beings.