Everyone knows what happens to a candle. It burns out. How quickly, could one ask? It depends on several factors: the size of the candle, the thickness of the wick, how many oxygen versus how many carbon dioxide, among other factors.
You can try to make it last longer by cutting the tip of the wick, making it shorter. But there is a catch: cut it too much, and the flame goes off early. Similarly, you can try to limit the oxygen from the surrounding air, perhaps placing the candle inside a cup, but the flame still goes off.
It's been a while I don't lit any candles. I felt like I have no proper place to do any rituals... But it seems like I've been feeling nothing at all. It all went off, just like the many candles I ever lit. It's not like I stop believing in anything at all, yet it feels like that: nothing is all I've been believing, and even my belief in nothing has been... _off_.
It's more than a faith crisis, it transcends the existential crisis: because it's not just a matter of my own existence, it muses the non-existence, too, as well as the "noumenon" encompassing both existence and non-existence (if this sentence even makes sense to you reader).
I've been burning since the dawn of my existence on this realm. The fire of passion between two people, unknown to me, once set me (more like "cursed me") with the fire of life. Could've been different and the bloodline of existential burden could've stopped on them... but no, organisms are heavily programmed to "reproduce" (whatever that means) and to "stay alive", even if such survival means unsolvable suffering.
The more I perceive the purposeless of existence, the faster I burn. It's both good and bad: the letting go of my Sisyphean boulder, the menace of being ran over by it as it rolls down towards the bottomless valley.
Does a candle "feel" something before its flame ceases? A watchful observer can notice how the flame trembles and oscillates (you can even hear it screaming silently) before it goes off, as if the candle is experiencing the everlasting agony of its lasting moments. But the permanence of the flame and the heat have their own toll. And the light: the blinding electromagnetic emanation. Seems painful to finally be embraced by the darkness, seems equally painful to stay under the opressive shine.
The candle keeps burning. The wax is dripping. The clock is ticking, and it's both the sweet lullaby and the ominous crackling of the flame, fighting itself as it keeps itself lit. I didn't ask to be a candle, let alone being lit to a flame that I'm since supposed to keep lit.