An Existential Writing Exercise: Write Your Own Suicide Note

A common reflective writing exercise is to write your own obituary, in the interest of contemplating the meaning of your own life, to celebrate your own past accomplishments, and even to set goals for yourself and your future. As the French existentialist philosopher Albert Camus said, however, the fundamental question of all philosophy is whether life is or is not worth living. A much more productive existential writing exercise, then, in the interest of getting right to the heart of this fundamental question, and far less pedestrian a writing exercise, is not to write your own obituary, but instead to write your own (mock) suicide note.

As an existential experiment, and while feeling particularly low this past weekend, I wrote my own mock suicide note below. (Disclaimer: Writing your own mock suicide note is not for the faint of heart; it’s Advanced-Level Existentialism, not Existentialism 101.)

I can’t do this anymore. I’ve been trying so hard to be who I long to be and to find the things my heart has been yearning for. And I don’t have another 42 years’ worth of searching in me. So it’s time to go. By the time anyone reads this, I’ll be dead. I loved a lot and was loved a little in return. I searched a lot and sometimes found. I wrote a lot and was sometimes read. I cried a lot and was sometimes comforted. I loved all of you more than you know, but I can’t keep living with these ups and downs—these beautiful highs and these dreadful lows. But I don’t seem able to live in the middle anymore either. Living an average life just isn’t for me, but that’s all I have been able to find, and I don’t want to keep searching. Soon all of you will be dead, too, and I’ll be forgotten—and so will you, not too many years from now. So make the most of the life you have left, and may the happiness that has been so elusive for me find you in abundance. Goodbye. Think of me from time to time, but not too much; go live instead.

Camus claimed in The Myth of Sisyphus that we can’t help but imagine Sisyphus happy despite the arbitrariness of his task pushing his rock uphill, day in and day out, despite the failures that brought him to his fate in the first place, and despite the hardship and struggle of it all:

The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. (Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus)

Since I’m still here and haven’t committed suicide, obviously, despite this mock suicide note, Camus must already have his answer from me: I am happy within myself despite—and perhaps because of—the arbitrary struggle up the mountain of my life, my failures and stumbling blocks, the missed opportunities and dead ends, all the steps I’ve made both forward and backward, after all.

In reality, the future is bright. The mere act of writing down one’s own worst-case scenario is itself cathartic. Like Friedrich Nietzsche once advised, we can’t be afraid to explore our hidden and even our darkest depths, to bore into the foundation, as he called it:

I undertook something that not everyone may undertake: I descended into the depths, I bored into the foundations. (Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day)

As I mentioned in my disclaimer above, not everyone is well-prepared to go spelunking into the dark recesses of his or her own consciousness, to dwell intentionally for a time in the darkest places to be found within oneself. All of philosophy—and psychology, by extension—is fraught with danger for those unprepared for a dangerous journey. We philosophy instructors sometimes present philosophy to our students in a too-safe manner, deemphasizing the lived dangers to oneself and one’s sanity in our emphasis on mere abstraction, mere “games” as Camus one said in the sentences immediately following his statement that the fundamental question of philosophy is suicide—whether life isn’t worth living:

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest—whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories—comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer. (Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus)

Let’s play no more trifling games with our philosophy and our psychology. Let’s no longer turn a blind eye to our own hidden depths just waiting to be explored and bored through, to acknowledge the darkness but continue our journey toward the lightness of being that we all crave. Many people today live with a false sense of fulfillment, shallowness masquerading as depth and authenticity. Do better by yourself. Bore into yourself, go in search of and intentionally explore your own hidden depths—whether by writing your own mock suicide note as I suggest here or through some other existential exercise of your choosing. Find the worst in yourself so you can also appreciate the best—your hidden strengths, your lost idealism, and your profound resolve to continue the journey toward the mountaintop you envision for yourself and your life.

Just think how much sweeter life will be after having tasted your own demise, after having chewed on the notion of ending your own life for a while and having let the reality of your own finitude sink in, as Marcus Aurelius once suggested in his Meditations nearly 2,000 years ago:

Picture to yourself every man who is pained or dissatisfied with anything as being like a pig kicking and squealing when sacrificed; and so is the man who laments silently, alone in his bed, that we are bound by fate. Realize too that it is granted only to the rational creature to submit willingly to the course of events; merely to submit is inevitable for all creatures. (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book X, No. 27)

Have fun writing your own mock suicide note, if you’re inclined to do so—if you can stomach the descent into your own emotional depths to get a momentary taste of the madness and the majesty that Nietzsche suggested you may find waiting for you there within yourself. Then go out and live your life rejuvenated, with a renewed sense of purpose and resolve to make the most of every short moment that remains—to really live—and thus prove yourself, and the author of your own suicide note, wrong.