In cricket, if you get badly hurt at the crease, you get an option. Of course, you can try batting with some aches and pains, one can even request a runner. But if all else fail or you cannot get back to batting, you can make a request. Your umpire can let you return to the dressing room. You will be replaced by a new player but you are definitely not out. It would not cost your wicket. There is a possibility of returning to the field anytime before all other wickets fall. If you do, your inning continues. If you do not, you would still not be considered as ‘out’: Out in any ways known. Not Caught behind, not stumped, not run out, not bowled, not Leg Before Wicket, not hit wicket, not anything else. The score card would only read….so and so….Rt/H or Retired Hurt. Cricket allows you that luxury to retire-hurt. Cricket allows you that rare privilege which life often doesn’t.
But in real life, people get out. They whack a ball hoping it will bring victory because being defensive would not save them. This is their one last chance. They take a murderous run hoping it will get them where they aspire to. They try their roaring best to stay alive and then they die trying. They attempt to stay aloof. Struggle hard and finally drown. They no longer can cope. However, living doesn’t a “retired hurt” option. No matter how heartbreaking, no matter how hopeless, you have to pick up the broken pieces and move on. One has to wipe your tears and carry on. Get up and go on.
But there comes a time that you can no longer cope. Call it cowardice, call it sin, call it selfishness but one chooses the last possibility. Here they do not have to explain anything to anyone. An open end. Ambiguous. Free to interpretation. Of course you will be judged by those alive. Judgement would be easier to the audience, because you are not there to challenge them. Judgement would probably be even more harsh because you are not there to tell your side of the story. On the other hand, you may even receive all the love and compassion you never could expect being alive. Whatever the reason, you have already made the decision. Executed it. No longer something that can be reversed.
It is supposedly a sin. It is also a premature departure. You might hear those lighthearted “Sin, men..” comments. But it is of no use. Sin it is. But easier to bear than the supposed merit it used to be. The suffocating, hurting, heart wrenching merit of living. Finally, you free yourself. No umpire is needed. You declare yourself, “DEAD”.
