Did it really happen? Or was it my imagination? I sometimes ask myself these questions. It can be difficult to tell apart.

I think I really had a conversation with someone who thought about committing suicide by hanging themselves. I asked them, "Don't you know a person's muscles become so relaxed they basically pee and defecate all over themselves? Wouldn't you be embarrassed?"

"Of course I wouldn't," they replied. "I'd be dead. Dead people don't care, can't care about such things."

It made perfect sense. But it also didn't. And I wasn't immediately sure why. Only now, many years after that conversation, did I give it proper thought.

If I knew they'd never try anything like that and were merely exploring the ideas, I'd inquire further: "On the premise you won't care what happens when you're dead, would you consider killing yourself by turning on a gas stove? This method would take you far less effort. There is just one downside. When people enter your apartments, they may trigger a massive explosion that will kill or maim them and your neighbors. But, like you've said, you'd be dead and thus wouldn't care, couldn't care about anything."

I'd expect a negative answer. People care about the future, regardless of whether they will be dead in it or not. Corpses can't feel anything. That's true. But that's also irrelevant. The person I was talking to while being alive considered the kind of future in which they make people stare at a mess acceptable, but the kind of future in which they make people explode not.

Is that it? Or is there anything deeper than that? It's a shame I couldn't immediately see through it. And even after some thought, it's not an entirely open book.