厭世其人

The hidden meaning behind the words "I don't want to live" is likely closer to "I don't want to live like this." I don't want to live like this. Expressed shortly, concisely—people often put it into a single, brief sentence: "I don't want to live."

At thirty-three years old, I still did not want to live, day after day. While it means I do not want to live like this, it is closer to a broader meaning: I do not want to live in a world like this.

The world a person perceives is grounded merely in the few people they meet, and the information or news obtained from their surroundings. For those living amidst joyful news in a place full of happy and cheerful people, the world must seem incredibly warm and beautiful. A beautiful world like that, filled with the laughter of children, where not a single person is sick, and no one worries about money.

I detest human beings immensely. Those who deceive themselves with self-deception. Those who ignore something called logic just to win a single verbal argument. Whenever I ponder the reason why I must live in this world with these tedious people, I constantly agonize over whether this is even a worthwhile thing to do. Must I absolutely live, even if it means going through all this hardship? What on earth is gained by it? What kind of wealth and honor exists out there that makes people struggle so fiercely just to stay alive?

Often, some say they cannot commit suicide because they fear the afterlife. Of course, since it is knowledge unknown to anyone, it is true that it is terrifying. However, if God exists and the afterlife exists as well, and if it turns out to be a universe that inflicts eternal punishment yet again upon those who ended their lives because living was too agonizing—then being born into a world like this is truly the greatest curse of all. Being born itself is the curse. For there is no such thing as liberation from suffering; it is merely a path leading to eternal agony.

Because there are so many loathsome humans, every single day my stay in this world is prolonged, I feel as though I am gradually withering away. To think I have to spend time in the same world as them. I feel like a traveler who has journeyed to the wrong universe. I am not familiar with this world at all. Even when it comes to joy, it is merely the pleasure derived from creation; everything else seems to hold no major meaning. Aside from the act of creating worlds, what joy is there left for me?

Whether looking up or looking down, I detest them all. Meeting the great corporate chairmen of society is no different from meeting the most wretched individuals. I strive to meet the wretched while thinking of them as Jesus, but the wretched often end up in that position precisely because they commit wretched acts. It is said that he who is faithful in small things will serve kings. Those who serve kings may be faithful individuals, but those who handle even the most trivial tasks trivially are hard to treat as equals, for a trivial soul has taken dominion over their physical body.

I struggle to think of them as the sick and the ailing. Even if every action they commit is a 'sin,' if I simply view them as sick and ailing human beings, at least a shred of tolerance arises in my heart. In essence, I am forcing myself to be persuaded. 'They have a sickness of the heart. They have a sickness of the mind. They act this way because they carry an ancient, indelible pain.' Even as I struggle to tolerate and rationalize their behavior by assigning evaluations that differ from reality, I cannot hold back the vomit because their appearance is so utterly nauseating. The reason this has become a sickening world is that there are far too many such humans.

Perhaps the current world is passing through yet another stage of normalization. Through the survival of the fittest, a generational filtering occurs even among humans. Perhaps, if a world of artificial intelligence arrives where many tasks are completely automated, the disgust I feel toward humans might lessen a bit. If the Earth's population is cut in half, or reduced even more than that, will things be a bit better then? What kind of curse did I receive that I am living through this time in this place? It is a life completely impossible to accept. Why am I even alive?

The only reason I am barely holding onto, the only thing keeping me from leaving, is my sentiment toward the parents who handed this life down to me. It is ironic. I resent the ones who gave me life, yet at the same time, I am living because of them. In a way, it must be out of pity. Because it is glaringly obvious that leaving first would tear their hearts apart, I simply cannot bring myself to end my life, bound by that very pity.

Waking up every day somewhere on the borderline between life and death, and wandering around that space, ironically makes me fear absolutely nothing; even God and the world merely appear like moments faced briefly right before departure. The mindset that I might never see any of this again by tomorrow transforms me into a certain kind of human severed from the world, and at the same time, into a human facing the raw reality of the world directly.

I feel as though I am touching the flesh of death. It feels similar to the texture of cold, damp earth. Wouldn't death possess the temperature of soil that holds moisture coldly? Or perhaps it possesses a temperature akin to a frozen moment, even lower than that.

I often think about such things. In my childhood, I wanted to become ordinary. Probably because I couldn't be ordinary, and I was despised. Nowadays, I sometimes want to become more human-like. Most people plan for the future, meet people, work, and build families as if they are going to live forever. To me, such a life appears far out of reach. I hated the world, I hated the people, and perhaps leaving a trace in this place was unnecessary from the very beginning.

Because I possess different eyes and see what others cannot see, I must also be unable to see the beautiful, simple colors that everyone else sees. Am I blessed, or am I cursed? Or is it that the rest of them are blessed, or cursed?