AUGUST 8

I am sorry if I hurt your feelings in my last letter, when I said that I did not like people telling me to give up hope. You made a very good point when you wrote that I have only two choices; continue to hope for the hopeless, or act like an adult and stop dreaming this foolish dream that will eventually kill me. It seems like a very simple choice, doesn't it? In fact, it is not. If you were in my situation you would understand better.

If you knew a man who were dying of some illness, would you force him to kill himself in order to get it over with sooner? Anyway, he cannot, because his illness makes him too weak to use the knife that would end his suffering.

Oh! I feel sometimes that I could gather my strength and throw away this passion. I wish there were somewhere else I could go to.

It is now later in the day. I just finished looking through my diary. From my writing I could see how purposefully I have got myself into this mess. I knew everything and yet acted as if I knew nothing. And I am still behaving the same way!

AUGUST 10

I have realized that it is only love that decides whether a man is happy or not. Here I am in one of the most wonderful and beautiful places in the world and yet I cannot be happy. I am around such good people and I am treated so well! Even Albert loves me. He and I have such long and wonderful conversations about the woman we both love. Some moments I feel our relationship is ridiculous and at others I am touched by our closeness.

From him I learned about how Charlotte's mother, as she was dying, asked her to care for her father and the children after her death. Since then, Charlotte has devoted her life to her family, taking care of their every need day and night, and yet she is just as happy as ever before. As I was listening to Albert's stories I gathered flowers, breathed in their wonderful smell and then threw them into the stream and watched as they disappeared from sight. He told me that he has just gotten a good job in town, working for the government. I guess this means he will be here all the time now.

AUGUST 12

Albert is truly an excellent man. Yesterday, I was getting ready to leave him when I noticed two guns on his wall. I was just about to make a trip into the mountains and thought that they might be useful to me. "Could I borrow those?" I asked him.

"Of course you can," he replied, "You'll have to clean them though. I haven't touched them in quite some time. In fact, I won't go near them anymore."

"Why?" I asked.

"Well, a while ago, I was visiting a friend in the countryside. I was bored one afternoon, because it was raining outside and I could not go anywhere. Somehow, the idea entered my mind that someone could very easily surprise us in the night and rob or even kill us. At once, I asked his servant to clean and load my guns. After he had finished, he began joking with the cleaning woman, pointing the guns at her. Well, one of the guns accidentally bred and sent a bullet straight through the poor woman's hand. Since then, I have always kept my guns empty."

He then went on for a long time listing every argument that could possibly be used to support the idea of keeping loaded guns in the house. Then he told me why he disagreed with all of the arguments. I soon became bored with the subject. Without thinking, I picked up one of the guns and pointed it at my own head.

"What are you doing?" he cried, pulling my arm down.

"There are no bullets," I said.

"Yes, but still, I don't understand why you'd point a gun at yourself. How can a man even think of doing such a thing?"

"Come now," I said, "You cannot say that you know people well enough to understand every single thing that they decide to do. If you did understand, you would not be so quick to think them crazy."

"Some things are simply wrong, no matter the reason behind it," he said.

"I suppose that's true. However, what about the man with no money who steals only in order to feed his family? What about the man who finds his wife in bed with another man and kills them both in terrible anger? These people are often forgiven by the judges of our courts."

"But we are talking about different things. You talk of people who are momentarily crazy. Their actions can be forgiven."

"But why must society always talk of 'craziness' as being a bad thing? This craziness is called 'passion', and passionate people are always hated. I, myself, am very passionate, and this makes people feel uncomfortable. Why? The greatest men in the world, the ones with the most brilliant ideas, are full of passion. They might even be called a little crazy. Who are you to judge such people?"

"You are taking our discussion in another direction. I'm talking about people who kill themselves. That is not the action of a great man. Only weak people kill themselves, because they cannot handle their difficult lives."

I was ready to end the conversation right then and there, because I hated hearing such empty words used as an argument against something I felt very deeply about. I calmed, however, and said very gently to him, "It is not weakness at all. What about a country of people who rise up and destroy a government that gives them no freedom? What about a man who saves his child from dying in a fire, by lifting a huge piece of wood the child is trapped under; a piece of wood he normally would not be able to lift? Are these people weak?"

Albert raised his eyebrows and said, "I'm sorry, but I fail to see how these things are related to what we're talking about."

"Alright. Let's look at it in another way. Let's examine what could be going on inside a man's mind when he decides to take his own life. You will agree that there are limits to what a man can handle, both in pleasure and pain. If he gets too much of either, he will be destroyed. So, what we are talking about is how well a man can handle his sadness, his pain. I don't believe it is right to criticize a man who kills himself. That would be like criticizing a man for dying of a disease."

"Nonsense!" cried Albert.

"It makes perfect sense. People die from illness when the natural forces of the body are so weakened that they can no longer repair the damage that has been done. Now take this and think of how certain ideas can get fixed in a man's mind. These ideas can then grow until they begin to control the man and make him powerless. People who do not experience this cannot understand or help such a person. All their advice and encouragement means nothing to the suffering man.

This did not satisfy Albert. I then brought up the news about a local girl who recently died after throwing herself into a lake. "She lived a very simple life. Most of her time was spent working mainly in the home. Her only idea of fun was going for Sunday walks and chatting with friends about the latest village gossip. Over time, however, new ideas somehow entered her mind and awakened new desires inside of herself These new desires made her older habits seem boring. Eventually, she met a young man and put all of her hope in him, because he made her feel so good inside. Nothing else then mattered to her. She could think of nothing but him. She hoped to be with him forever. His sweet words to her made her love even greater and her thoughts more hopeful. Her eagerness grew and made her more and more sensitive. Finally, when she reached out to take him into her arms forever, she found that he has gone. Suddenly her whole world had changed. The one thing that mattered to her in the world, the one thing she gave up everything for, was gone. She became blind to everyone and everything around her. She felt no hope at all. She thought of herself as being alone in the world. There was so much pain inside of her that she jumped into the hands of death, hoping to feel no more."

"Now, Albert," I continued, "wouldn't you agree that this poor child had no choice but to kill herself? It would be cold and thoughtless for a man to say that she ought to have waited until her sad feelings went away and another man came into her life. It would be like saying a diseased man should wait until his body recovers, then he will be fine."

"I still don't see the similarity you suggest between disease and suicide," said Albert, "Also, this girl you speak of was uneducated. A wiser woman would not have made the same decision."

"This isn't about intelligence," I replied, "It's about passion. Passion, when it is at its strongest, totally takes control over intelligence. Ah! But I suppose we've talked enough about this today." I then got up to go, feeling troubled because neither one of us could persuade the other of his opinion. Must people always so often misunderstand one another?

(end of section)