September 27, 2009

  • A Permanent Solution To A Temporary Problem

    Recently, a coworker of mine committed suicide. Although he was a good guy, I was not all that close with him, which is to say that when I did happen to talk to him it was usually about work or sports. Certainly it is sad that he is gone, but honestly, his loss has not had a big effect on me. It did, however, make me think about suicide. No, not my suicide, but suicide in general.

    As many of you know, my friend's dad committed suicide last year. My coworker's suicide brought back a rush of memories about my friend's dad's suicide. Surly there are the inevitable questions of "why?" and "what could I have done to stop it?" Once again I'm reminded of the path of destruction and trail of tears left behind following a suicide. Some might say that the person committing suicide is a selfish and self centered person who thinks of nobody but themselves by choosing to commit such an act. Others say that the person who commits suicide has mental problems and a person of healthy mind would never take such a drastic measure.  You can make an argument for either of those points. My point is that there are things to be learned when any tragedy strikes, especially one a preventable as suicide. Now I want to be clear that I'm not suggesting that anybody left behind could have prevented the suicide; I'm merely stating that the person who commits suicide could have prevented the act. And let's also be clear here that I'm not referring to assisted suicide in which somebody who is terminally ill chooses to end their life. That is a topic for another post.

    One of the lessons learned is that one should always seek help from others if things get so bad that suicide is the only perceived way out. I'm not even saying not to commit suicide. I'm just saying that sometimes, you need to swallow your pride and realize that nobody can make it through life alone; everybody needs  help along this journey of ours. Many times people who commit suicide don't see any other options or that they are trapped and the only way out is ending it all. This is going to sound completely crazy, but honestly, I don't entirely disagree with that statement. And I also don't entirely disagree with the act of suicide itself. People have a right to do what they want to do. And if somebody is so fucking miserable that they will not truly be happy until they are dead, well who am I to say otherwise, after all I am not that person and I am not living in their shoes. But, what I am saying is that if you take the time to get help for your problems, more times than not a solution can be found. Sure, the solution and the other way out may be extremely difficult and might result in others seeing you differently, but in the end, it is far better than the suicide option. Look, in the grand scheme of things you are only granted with the gift of life for a limited, short period of time. Naturally living out one's life goes by in a flash and in many ways its over before you know it, so why speed the process up by killing yourself? Also, life can end at any time; there are no guarantees that you will make it to 80. There are so many people who die at a young age and would have loved to have lived until the age of some people who commit suicide. Life is precious; one should value their own life at all times.

    There is also a very good chance that I may very well be speaking out of my own ass with all of this, as I often do with many posts. Like just about everybody, the thought of committing suicide has passed through my mind a time or two, but like most people, I never gave it a serious thought as I am completely terrified of death. One of the reasons is that death is so very final and permanent. People of faith insist that there is a greater life waiting for you at the end of this life and non-believers have the opinion that once your life ends, that's it, life is over and there is no after party soon to follow. What both of these groups have in common is that nobody truly knows. Like it or not, the uncertainty of what happens after the end is what puts the fear of death into most people. As I have written many times before, my own belief is that there is nothing else. This is why I'm so scared of death. Its also why I value life so much. Being a very morbid sonofabitch, I was thinking over the past few days what situations I would need to be in to make me kill myself. The only scenario in which I think I would kill myself is if I was given life in prison with no parole, in which case there is no way out. Just look at somebody like Bernie Madoff. He was given 150 years in prison without the possibility of parole. He will be 221 when he is released in 2149. There is a slight chance that most of the people he knows now might be dead by then. If I were faced with what he is faced with, I very well might have killed myself after all my appeals were denied. This is the only way I would ever consider suicide.

    Of course, I never know what tomorrow and the future holds. I'm quite certain that most people who have killed themselves would have said the same thing; they could never envision a time in their life that they would ever kill themselves. But, now that I have had the up close perspective of people who have killed themselves, I have learned some valuable lessons that made me value and appreciate those around me so much more than before.