πολλὰ τὰ δεινὰ κοὐδὲν ἀνθρώπου δεινότερον πέλει.

I will not run away.

If the unexamined life is not worth living, how much more the one without intensity! I've lived a waking sleep, a conscious death, moments cascading before the consciousness without appreciation or purpose. A dull listlessness, the rut of routine, robbing me of the little time I have here.

I will not live that way.

And the way out of that ennui is masochism. The harmonies and dissonances, the pains and the pleasures, the joys and the sorrows: it is the celebration of life, the absolute opposite of the death drive the psychologists have so erroneously imputed to us! What saccharine things are a song full of tonics and fifths, a life spent free from struggle and sorrow! The harmonies and dissonances of pain and pleasure make a sweet symphony for my soul to gorge upon, its intensity screaming with a pressing insistency: I am LIFE, I am wonderful and terrible, and all the better for having the two mixed into one!

I will no longer run away from what gives life its spice and its color, its meaning.

What would one want with heaven, anyway?