"Birth is pain. Death is pain. All else between is but a memory of the first pain or a foreshadowing of the last pain. Why live?"
              "Because you're wrong! There is more to life than pain!"
              "How am I wrong?"
              "How is birth pain? It is a beautiful miracle! There is joy in the creation of a new life. And people aren't always thinking of birth or death."
              "But they are. Babies are happy, warm, and safe in the womb. Birth is a trauma for a child, who is expelled from a familiar warm haven to a strange cold place, forcefully severed from its connection with it's mother and begun on a road filled with pain and ending in death. All of life's endeavors are simply efforts to avoid the final pain of death or to appease the initial pain of birth."
              "I don't believe you! I won't!" She is desperate now, seeing that he doesn't listen. His logic continues inexorably to an end she cannot allow, and all she can do to stop it is argue with a man who never loses an argument.
              "But you do. I can already see that my logic is winning you. As much as the romantic within you wants to justify itself in logic, you know that it cannot." Dark triumph shines in his eyes; he thinks he has won. He doesn't bother to lift the knife yet, for he needs to see this argument to its end.
              "I can. You claim that everything we do in life that is not trying to escape death is trying to get over the trauma of our birth. How is that possible? Am I here because I am trying to deal with that trauma?" She gestures to the trees and the ground and then to his knife.
              "You are here because you wish to have friends. You wish to have friends because when you are with your friends you feel safe and comforted. You feel an echo of the safety of the womb and you try to hold on to it as much as possible." She opens her mouth to reply but he shakes his head. "Love too is simply that. You love because you want to be safe and warm. When we make love, we are trying to be as close to each other as we were to our mothers. We want children so that we can give someone else that same warm feeling to someone else. Or so we so self-righteously think. The truth is that we want to hurt someone else the same way we were hurt."
              "No. I don't believe you. Some of what you say is true, but then you use it to justify ridiculous things. Just because you've experienced such spite does not mean we are all that way!"
              "I suppose that next you will plead with me in terms of love." The sneer with which he pronounces love almost drives her to tears, but a flood of anger overwhelms it.
              "So that is what this is all about? You wish to hurt somebody as you were hurt? I thought all of life was trying to avoid death! Do you think that by embracing the pain of death you can just escape all the other pain you feel, render it nothing?"
              "Yes. Because after I have died, and gone through that short pain, there will be no more pain, given or avoided. There will be nothing."
              Realization dawns on her face then. She has lost this battle, this argument. Her own words lost it for her, giving him exactly what he wanted. She grabs his hand trying to stay him with her own strength, having given up on words.
              "You know that I can win this fight. I am stronger than you, in my mind and in my body. Why do you persist in fighting a battle you have lost? Why inflict this pain upon yourself? Give in and let it be."
              "Because I love you! And because. it's alien to my nature to simply give up on anything, including life. The pain of life is simply the price we pay for its joy. If you would stop focusing on the pain and allow yourself to feel that joy you'd see that life is worth keeping!" Perhaps her words would be able to sway him after all, if he has not thrown her off yet.
              "That price is too high for me."
              "You disgust me! You use your logic of pain as an excuse for a selfish desire to inflict pain on others. You somehow believe yourself justified because you claim we all do it. Well, maybe we all hurt one another, but few do it intentionally just to pay back the world for being born! That is a twisted, sick way of viewing things, a self-righteous excuse for inflicting pain on others. Instead of complaining about the pain in life, try to do something about it!"
              He smiles, the amused smile of one who thinks of himself as superior. "There is nothing that can be done about the pain of life. I cannot make birth easier nor stop death, foolish girl."
              "But you can make the life in between as good as possible. You simply haven't chosen to. If you choose the pain of death now there will be no chance to make it any better."
              "And no chance for more pain or for it to get worse. Give in, join me and free yourself from pain. If you join me you will not feel the pain you worry about at my passing."
              He doesn't even wait for an answer, but effortlessly throws her away and lifts the knife. Quickly he cuts the last rope and falls away into eternity.
              She watches him fall, full of indecision and pain. She knew he wouldn't listen, but she couldn't have let him go without trying. Now she could join him or go on. She takes a step towards the edge, her mind running over the conversation. A part of her does not want to go on without him, the part that almost accepted his argument. She takes another step forward.
              Her mind floods with images of her mother, waiting for her at home, her friends who planned to see her tomorrow, her father's birthday in a week, her students. "No." she says aloud. "I will not join you in creating more and more pain. If everyone thought like you, there would indeed be nothing but pain. But I don't. I believe in love and joy and I choose to give both. You could not truly have loved me to inflict such pain, and now that I can see that I am free to live without you."
              She turns around and walks away, her step lightening.

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