Stay or go

When you feel that most of your life is near death, your real question is, like the song, "Should I stay or should I go?" This comes from the idealization of death, as I can see it, because despite our grasp and attachment to life by DNA command, I'm pretty sure that deep inside everyone's subconscious, there exists the clarity that we are walking towards it with every second and heartbeat.

See You On the Other Side, Matthew Wong, 2019

I can't say this about all professions, but at least for those who devote their lives to creation in the arts, there's a tendency to be nearer to death than the rest of the population. Now, I'm not an academic in mental and emotional health, but I do know firsthand that creation burns inside like a volcano's magma. The mind acts as an amplifier of thoughts, emotions, and sensorial experiences [whether asleep or awake]. Life turns out to be, so many times, unbearable.

Matthew Wong knew something about that intensity. Or perhaps he simply lived inside it. And that's where the brutal dilemma between deciding to die or to live comes forward: What if I commit suicide and the day after, my work finally shines? When the burden starts to crush you inside out, options grow thin.

Let me end with this: the "romanticize" or "romantic" expression is wrongly understood as well as its use. The romanticism epitome consists exactly in what I have exposed here; it starts and ends with death.

Stay or go