From The Diary of Young Man

Days are just passing; nothing much has been happening. I've abandoned writing—I don't write nowadays, perhaps because my mind has been quite at ease. I feel that we deny our lives, yet to truly live is to become something more than human, something extreme.

I feel that art is so full of life. Sex, love, books, music, writing, painting—there is so much life in them that one could spend his whole life simply living through them. What is death but a void of nothingness? The realization of death is not an end, but can only be the beginning of life. One must always live on the edge of life, constantly in conflict with it. The only way to become attached to life is to know the despair of humanity.

Sadness makes you one with life; it forces you to live inward. The one who lives in constant clash with life, someone who refuses to accept easy answers, who questions every single motive—a skeptic—must be someone I will truly admire. He must be the man of the world. For truly existing does not demand peace; it demands conflict, despair, suffering, and longing.

I've come to know this prejudice that everyone conceives of a philosopher as someone who is calm and collected, someone who has found solace in life and knows every answer to every problem. How wrong this is! This prejudice is merely the description of a petty monk. A philosopher is always someone who is in constant clash with reality. Every minor thought torments him. He has become too weary of enduring himself. He longs to live like a plant—aware of nothing, possessing the fortune of not being able to think.

A philosopher longs to be nothing, yet he loves his unendurable heart and mind. He takes great pride in them. Even if he were given the chance to strip away his consciousness and live freely, he would decline it—and later blame himself for doing so. A man who possesses consciousness may not respect himself, but he takes pride in possessing this dagger. Clairvoyance is something every man dreams of possessing, yet when he finally embodies lucidity, he dreams only of being unawakened.

One may not respect himself, but he always respects his neighbour even less than himself. You see, my dear reader, every man dreams of having power, respect, and, most importantly, love. When a man lacks power, he sees himself as helpless and blames others. When he lacks respect, he grows to hate others and spends his life pursuing it. But only when a man does not possess love does he become a thinker—that is, a philosopher.

A philosopher distracts himself by seeking the truth of his miserable life. He embarks upon the journey of creating his own meaning; therefore, he embarks upon the journey of destroying himself. For there comes a time in every philosopher's life when he becomes aware that every meaning, every truth, every lover he possesses, every philosophy, every piece of knowledge he attains, every dream—they are all but pointless. They contain no inherent meaning within themselves.

He realizes that everything is merely a means of deceiving him from that eternal void of suffering, from the eternal conflict with reality. Every man must awaken to the fact that he truly has no one. And when he gazes into this deep abyss long enough, he cannot help but fall into it. The more he falls, the more enlightened he becomes; therefore, the more he longs for death.

This void destroys the human within him. There comes a time when nothing can save such a man—not even love—for he is too awakened to love or to feel loved. All that remains within him is the desire for either death or love. The longer he lives, the more pointless existence appears to him.

That will be the story of his life. His life will end in misery. He will not be remembered, even after his death, and all that will remain of him is his misery. Knowledge is a curse. Awareness is a form of death that kills you while you are alive. Life should be called a series of deaths. Awareness is the root cause of every torment, every suicide, and every philosophy. Nothing can remain of the one who possesses awareness. He shall die with a desire for love.