I’ve never enjoyed handling Montaigne’s subject here. The question of suicidal rights and activities makes me uneasy. One reason: I think most people who choose to die this way are under tremendous mental distress and I wish first that we could help them however possible to ease that distress.

But I also know that Montaigne isn’t talking about that subject, his is in the realm of rational suicide. It’s fair to argue if suicide can ever be rational, given that life is a binary, you either have it or you don’t, and it seems irrational on its face for anyone to decide against life.

Even this level of analysis is making me uneasy, however, because my own father basically chose this route at the end of his life and it continues to trouble me. At this point in life, I would have plead with my father to seek counseling before deciding to forgo more aggressive treatment for his cancer, and perhaps might have questioned the strange activities in his final days.

That’s as much as I can say about the topic here. I have a personal aversion to suicide. Some have suggested to me that I “look into” hospice care for my dog or perhaps even more extreme measures, and such suggestions anger me, for reasons I covered in some recent essays.

I’m also not interested in writing another banal reflection on why life is worth living. Nothing that I could suggest makes my life worthwhile would apply to anyone else, so why share it? Reasons that seem universal, in my opinion, are the least valuable to anyone suffering with their existence.

Perhaps the best news is that, despite his numerous reflections on the subject, Montaigne did not opt for this route himself. His life then is a rejection of his theorizing. And there is nothing more Montaignean than letting one’s life speak louder than words.