Angelo Reyes’ Highest Expression of Freedom
Whether he knew it or not Angelo Reyes was a true blooded existentialist who lived out to the hilt what they all have always stood for: suicide is the highest expression of freedom. Towards the end of his illustrious career he came face to face with the darkest side of life: treachery, venality, greed and insatiable lust for power. In fact, the more they become permanent fixture in their favorite watering holes these are all what they can see. The utter meaninglessness of existence causing angst that leads to nausea down into the stinking gutter where they all are infected with a strange disease they poetically and fondly call sickness unto death. Contrary to standard textbook explanation that a person who commits suicide is not in his right mind, Angelo Reyes had never been saner and more lucid in all his life.
Notwistanding all learned peroration I venture to say that the noble General put an end to his life in full consciousness, his wits all running smoothly so that he perfectly understood the full implication of what he was doing. A brave man indeed but haunted by noblesse oblige. He after all had a noble pedigree way back to the Stoics of old who by the power of reason were able to vanquish the greatest enemy of all – the fear of death. Ask any sophomore philosophy student and s(he) will tell you without batting an eyelash how these rare breed of men argued and succeeded to foil the sting of the fear of death. When pressed to give an explanation why death is not to be feared, the Stoics employed this formula. Right now you are either dead or alive. Either way, it is the height of irrationality for you to be afraid of death. Now that you are alive, then death is not around. And when you are dead, who is there to feel that fear. You are precisely dead and so fear has no power over you.
Angelo Reyes was a gentleman of the highest order. Paging all honorable gentlemen in and out of active military service, especially those who are implicated in the sordid scandal: show yourselves to be men of honor and bravery. As the Romans would say: Monstra te virum esse. Show yourself a man. Are you guys men enough to own up that you have participated in what you might have taken to be a mere harmless ritual of apportioning a share of the spoils of war? How many of you can do the Angelo move? If you don’t have the guts to do it you do not deserve to be called gentlemen. You are a bunch of brazen cowards, a disgrace to the nobles.
We can wait but our patience may one day run out. And may God have mercy on us when that day comes! Dies illa, dies irae, calamitatis et miseriae; dies magna et amara valde!
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