Sweet Life

Death is inevitable. We all know that life is fragile and must eventually come to an end. However hard we try, we can’t last forever. Despite our own mortality, nothing is more tragic than a life unnecessarily cut short.

There is a history of suicide in my family. My great-grandfather was depressed and convinced he was ridden with cancer, after he shot himself, the autopsy didn’t show a single malignancy. A great uncle divorced his wife then purposely overdosed on sleeping pills. And a great aunt unsuccessfully attempted suicide by cutting her wrists. Because of the impact that suicide has had on my life I know that it is not something to be taken lightly and it certainly isn’t an acceptable way to garner attention. So when teenagers threaten to kill themselves for some trivial reason such as a the end of a 3 day relationship, I, a complete pacifist, am overcome by the urge to hunt them down and shake and/or slap some sense into them!

Where is the perspective? Your life isn’t ruined and the world isn’t ending. Tomorrow the sun will rise and the planet will continue to spin. And on the off chance that it doesn’t, it’s because the sun went supernova and annihilated the solar system, not because your heart is broken.

Some people think that by committing suicide they are “doing the world a favor”. That they are relieving a burden from other people’s lives; perhaps because they have hurt someone and regret it so much that they believe some sort of martyrdom is the only acceptable retribution. In reality, what they’re doing is causing unbearable pain, guilt, regret, and uncertainty on an unknowable number of people.

Sometimes those who consider suicide do so because they think no one cares about them. Think again. Everyone has someone. No exceptions. Even if it’s not someone near you, there are people in this world who care about you... me, for example. Caring about a vast number of people whom you will never meet is a relatively new concept to human nature; nevertheless there are thousands out there, like myself, who care about you just because we share this lifetime.

To consider suicide is to consider that you would be better off dead than alive. Where is the logic? Despite what you may believe, death isn’t like going to sleep and it certainly isn’t like dreaming. Even saying that you see only darkness or nothingness is an overstatement. The neural connections in the brain cease, awareness or consciousness of any sort is simply impossible. If you believe in some form of the soul living on after physical death then suicide makes even less sense! Most religions maintain that killing yourself prevents you from entering their version of utopia (e.g. Heaven). Basically a religious person committing suicide says ‘eternal damnation in a fiery realm of torment would be better than living another day’. Whichever way you look at it, death is final and absolute.

Life is precious. Why is this so hard for us to understand? We consider suicide because we lose all hope. But there is always hope, even if it's beyond our sight. No matter how bleak your outlook, there is always something worth going on for. Always. Everyday has its own sweetness, even the sad ones. You mourn, but you live.