We're Not All Meant to be Happy

At heart, I think there are only a few types of people.
We express ourselves differently, but there are a limited amount of possible yearnings, so the real question, is what your deepest yearning is.

Because that defines your life strategy, and ultimately who you are.
We are all out to get something, and we are attempting to pursue those objectives as our lifeplan.

For Gordon Brown, from age six, that lifeplan was to be Prime Minister.
For some, the yearning is be to powerful.
For many, maybe most, it is to find love.
To love and be loved.

But there are a few who have yearnings most people cannot comprehend. There are people who have no real desire to be happy.
People who get restless when their world is still.
For whom the yearnings of most other people are unsatisfying.

Who have no desire to grow old.
Who feel cheated if denied the chance to go young in a blaze of glory.

It's hard to understand for someone who doesn't feel this. In modern times, it is the James Dean phenomenon, Live Fast, Die Young, Leave a Good Looking Corpse, as indeed the lucky anti-hero did.
Most of you can't see how or why people like me genuinely envy him that. Jim Morrison and John Lennon mesmerise partly, because they were thus blessed.

Do you get it now?

It's the wish to go with a bang, rather than a whimper, for life to always lead uphill, right up to the climax, your finest hour, the moment of your own passing, a passing that will immortalise you, fresh faced and the image of virtue, an image to inspire others.

That's of course why early Christians were so hard to deal with. They got into the psychology of martyrdom. Not only are you prepared to die for your beliefs, it's actually your lifeplan.
Hard to fight that. Causes that can inspire this, are on to a winner.



I can tell you, it's nothing like morbidity. It's very much not a wish to die, quite the reverse in some ways. Your ending is valuable to you. You aren't going to waste it. The whole point of your LIFE, is an aspiration to find the most glorious ending you can. This is one of the reasons why people with this fixation almost never commit suicide. It's not how we want to go.
I can honestly say, I've never once felt suicidal in my life, and there were times when stronger men than me, would have done.

I first realised I had these yearnings many years ago. I had a dream where I was being led out to be publically hanged. The whole thing felt so real.
Thing was, I knew in the dream I was being hanged as a rebel.
I knew in my dream I was right, and I wanted the crowds to see me hanged.
I can still feel the tension in my bowels, the pounding in my chest, the certain knowledge these were my final moments.
And that as a result, I had to give the performance of my life.

To stare back at the jeering crowd and let my gaze reach the quiet faces, the faces that would question what they saw, the hearts that would take my place.

And I felt beautifully euphoric.

I know it was just a dream, but I'm telling you, it felt better than sex.

It's not a desire to die. The suicide cheapens his death as well as his life.
To me, my death is not something I want to waste.

To me, The Wind That Shakes The Barley is one of the most moving films in the world. I hope you don't mind me spilling the beans if you haven't seen it, but I love it for the same way other people like Love Stories.
The hero faces the firing squad.
He dies for Ireland.

His death acheives something bigger than his life can.
People sometimes think I'm joking when I say I'd die for Ireland.
Many people set a great precedent on that front.

I'd be HONOURED to join them.

But here's the worst.
There's a part of me ENVIES Jesus.



For two reasons.

Firstly, for being able to change the world in the most dramatic way any death could.

And secondly, for having the will to pull it off.
I know I couldn't go through what he did. He must have had utter faith in what he was doing.
I so wish I had that.

It means having absolute certainty of the level of success your death will acheive.
Where do you get faith like that?

I suppose this outlook is why my addictive personality drives me hedonistically through life.
I have this sense that if I live long enough to know my grandchildren, I will have failed.
Failed to leave that good looking corpse.

Sometimes I think I'm not far from the summit, if not there.

Nothing I can do about it, but hitting thirty will be hard.