The Fool on the Hill: Out, brief candle?

I've been unwell for exactly a month; over the course of the winter, I've been unwell for quite a lot more than that. By unwell, I mean relatively minor viral infections, the most recent one almost certainly Covid. But of course, with me, viral infections always trigger my ever-lurking psychiatric demons, so I've been experiencing nightmares, psychotic hallucinations, and very persistent 'suicidal ideation', to give it it's polite name. All this means my brain is so full of noise and chaos that it's hard to concentrate on even simple tasks.

It's... very trying.

I've also lost 10% of my body weight. I'm very unfit, and it will take me a long time to build that fitness back — it took two full years to build back fitness after my first Covid infections in 2020. The nature of living where I choose to live, as I choose to live, is that it's physically quite tough. And I'm sixty-seven. Things are not going to get better.

The years of a man's life, the psalmist tells us, are three score and ten; for the last decade I've set that as the sentence I had to serve, as the target I had to reach before I could with a good conscience cash in my chips and go for an early bath. But honestly, if all that means is two more years of this, I don't see the point.

I have nothing more to give the world that the world needs. I am doing nothing which has positive effect, either to arrest global warming, or to build the good society, or — well, anything else, really. Even my attempts to support my friends do at best no perceivable good.

Indeed, it's not merely that there is nothing in the future that I can reasonably hope to achieve; it's that there's nothing in my past that I have achieved that has made anyone's life better in any significant way. That isn't self pity: that's harsh truth.

It seems to me that the sensible thing to do now is to spend the summer putting my affairs in order and preparing the croft for its next steward, whoever that may be; and saying farewell to my friends.

Dying at a time of ones own choosing is not a tragedy. I have no dependants, no offspring. No one needs me.

It will be Beltane on Monday; Samhain seems a very reasonable day to die.

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