“Remember, young man, there can be only one truth, and its versions are mistakes that generate untruth,” the professor had said without even looking at him.
But how do you find it, if the path towards this truth is darker than the blackness of this night? Where do you search, how do you determine the starting point, the thread that will eventually lead you to the truth?
To some, it might have appeared that the man was preparing to commit suicide and was just about to leap. The desire to take a single step and throw himself off the cliff into the abyss of the roaring river was checked only by the instinct of self-preservation, inherent only to a sober mind and the irresistible thirst for life. In a fit of despair, his consciousness tore fragments of the past out of his memory, as if proving the need to continue the search for answers to questions that were rending his heart.
“Could this be a solution? Could one step be all I need to get the answer,” he asked himself while peering into the inky blackness of the ravine.
From the darkness of the night, his memory once again recalled the lecture hall at the university and the voice of his philosophy professor: “What can this last step towards Azrael[1] and eternal slumber solve? Life in general is a directed movement from birth to death, avoided by nobody. The thought of ending one’s own life is driven by the desire to find some ultimate truth, but also doubt in achieving it. After all, the more you crave the ultimate, the more you realize its unattainability. It is these shifts between both extremes that lead to self-ruin.”
The professor paused, scanned the audience with unseeing eyes, took a book from his desk and, after shuffling through some pages, continued: "Sigmund Freud[2], the most renowned psychologist and psychiatrist of his time, even introduced the notion of the 'death drive' or death instincts, since he could not otherwise explain many of the things a human being is capable of inflicting on themselves. The desire for self-destruction, it seems, is in our nature. While all living things struggle to survive, some humans, on the contrary, invest extraordinary energy into ruining their lives completely, sometimes ending them."
The professor put the book aside and, crossing his hands across his chest, and after a small pause addressed the first row of students: “As to what pushes a certain individual to choose the path of self-destruction is a controversial issue that isn't fully understood yet. After all, human beings have been observed and studied closely throughout the millennia, yet they remain underexplored, and something that is difficult to explore and analyze.”