There is an exercise in logic. Its a maze, and in the maze are you and a minortaur. You can move one square at a time, the minotaur moves two at a time. The goal is to reach the exit before he gets you. The trick to this is that the minotaur always takes the most direct path to you, even if that path is to face a wall and not move. So the key is to use the maze to force the minotaur to require more than twice the number of moves to get to you than it is for you to get to the exit. In most presentations of this exercise, around level 3, it is actually impossible to win if you move on the first round. Every moment you take causes the minotaur to round a corner and gives him the ability to get you before you get the door. So the trick is to pass your first round and make the minotaur move first, and when he moves he gets stuck in a dead end that gives you free reign of the maze. You win by choosing to sit still. You win by doing nothing.
In some people’s lives there may come a time where they believe that they have run out of choices, that there are no more opportunities. Some people, when presented this option don’t know what to do, like people who continually lose the maze and the minotaur exercise. They simply cannot comprehend that the best course of action is to let go and do nothing. The world will move around them, and things will change, and likely the answer they are looking for will present itself, or at least new doors will open. But they can’t do this, so they keep moving, and they keep losing.
Faced with the situation that all of ones actions result in losing but unwilling to not act, some people make the only choice they feel they have left. They choose to finally, absolutely and brutally remove all choice and opportunity from their lives by ending their lives.
Sometimes, it may seem like there is no end to misery in sight, that life is bleak and black and horrible, that everything you do only makes the pain worse. If this happens, remember that sometimes there is nothing you can do to win, but sometimes by doing nothing you win.
Its good. Its bad. Its life.
Live it.
– for Carl, the friend I’ll never know
