Every man once in his life dreams of that last ride. Just him on his favorite bike or a car, cruising along the highway, feeling wind in his soul , and then he begins to speed up to an extent where the world is left behind. And suddenly he crashes into something and jumps off a cliff, followed by nothing but a dead silence. For some, this dream becomes a reality. For some, it stays just a dream. The twisting fact is that both are labeled as a coward. Why?????
Because the world never stops to ask what brought him to that highway in the first place.
Nobody sees the years of quiet suffering that led to that ride. The sleepless nights staring at ceilings. The phone he kept picking up and putting back down because he didn't want to be a burden. The smile he wore like armor every single morning, so convincing that the people closest to him would later say , I had no idea. That is perhaps the cruelest part of it all. He was so good at pretending to be fine that the world took him at his word.
Men are handed a particular kind of silence at birth. Cry, and you are soft. Struggle, and you are weak. Ask for help, and you have failed some unwritten code that nobody officially taught you but everybody somehow enforces.
So he carries it. He carries the failed business, the broken marriage, the aging father he couldn't afford to help, the dreams he quietly buried at thirty five , and he carries all of it alone, because that is what men are supposed to do. Carry things. Without complaining. Without cracking.
But weight has a limit. Even mountains erode.
So when the weight finally becomes unbearable, he doesn't call a helpline. He doesn't sit across from a therapist. He does the one thing that has always made sense to him, he rides. One last time. Just him, the road, and the terrifying freedom of a decision finally made. And in that moment, for the first time in perhaps years, he feels something close to peace. That is not cowardice. That is a man who was let down, by a world that celebrated his strength and abandoned him in his weakness.
And then there is the other man. The one who dreams of that same ride but never takes it. Who sits with the fantasy of disappearing , not because he wants to die, but because he is exhausted of living the way he has been living. He never acts on it. He wakes up the next morning, puts on the armor again, and shows up.
The world calls this survival. But sometimes, late at night, even he wonders if staying was strength or simply the fear of the unknown dressed up as courage. And quietly, without ceremony, he is judged too , dramatic, they say. Seeking attention. A coward for even having the thought.
So the man who goes , coward.
The man who stays but struggles , coward.
When exactly was he allowed to just be human?
The road doesn't judge him. The wind doesn't ask him to explain himself. Perhaps that is why the highway calls so loudly , because in a world full of noise and expectation, it is the only place that ever offered him silence on his own terms.
We lose thousands of men every year to that last ride. And for every one we lose, there are thousands more parked on the side of the road , engine running, hands on the wheel, choosing to turn back. Those men need something the world has been tragically slow to offer.
Not pity. Not lectures. Not a label.
Just someone to sit beside them and say , I see the weight. You don't have to carry it alone. And no, that does not make you less of a man. That makes you the bravest kind.
The road will always be there.
So will we , if we choose to be.