Response #7 to the Craig’s List suicide note, heavily edited for the gist of it since this guy is obviously not suicidal and never has been (and he rambled):

Date: 2003-09-25, 11:21AM

I decided long ago that if I reached the point where I was willing to take my life, then that should be the point I'm willing to try anything else first. Literally anything. Selling everything I own and signing up on a tramp steamer. Dancing naked in the streets. Living in the desert for 30 days. Helping children in Ghana. Going to clown school. Fasting for a week in my favorite cemetery. Feeding bears in Asia. Anything at all, no matter how strange, difficult, illogical, intimidating, or inane; any crazy thought or dream or idea I've ever had. Because absolutely NOTHING -- no embarrassment, no failure, no difficulty, nothing -- could be worse than what I'm about to do.

And there's no rush with that, is there? You can be just as dead tomorrow as today, next week as this week, or next month as this month. One extra month, week, or even day spent in any way you've ever thought, doing anything you've ever thought of in your entire life -- what's the harm?

You have now made one of the most awful, but also the most liberating decisions you could possibly make. The decision that allows you to do ANYTHING with your life. If there's anything in any darkened corner of your mind you've always wanted to do or try -- but you go through with killing yourself first anyway -- then you're just running away. And you'll know it. It will be there with you at the moment your life dwindles away. It will be the last thing you think.

So please, think about this first. Probe those corners of your mind, and if you find ANYTHING there -- do it. Because nothing could possibly be worse than what you're about to do. Don't throw away the freedom you've just given yourself.

Yea, I've got a puzzled look on my face right about now, too. That's some twisted logic there, equating the decision to commit suicide with giving oneself the ultimate freedom to "do anything". How does he make ending one's life an excuse to pro-actively live it, just in a different way?

If you have that drive to do those things because you're gonna kill yourself anyway, you have the drive to live. Doing those things is living. Conversely, if you're gonna kill yourself, you don't have the drive to do those things.

The real tragedy would not be if the guy kills himself without exhausting every possible thing that he may have ever wanted to do in his life. The real tragedy would be if this response writer, wanting to live, doesn't do the things he would only do if he decided to kill himself! How awful to be constrained not to let go and be free just because you want to live!

- "Really, honestly, probe the corners of your mind. Is there ANYTHING there that you've always wanted to do? No constraints, no worrying about consequences, what would you do?"
- "Um, I think I would kill myself."