The holiday weekend's starting and I don't think too many people will be reading this blog over the next three days. Good! Now's the time to sneak in a couple of serious posts! Brace yourself because here comes...
WHY SUICIDE SUCKS!Everybody's had a bad patch when everything seemed dark and insufferable. I imagine that everybody (except Alicia) has at least once thought about doing themselves in. It's an appealing alternative to misery. If some painless way could be found to do it then why not? Here are the reasons why I believe it's a bad idea.
1) There are very few painless ways.
2) Your death would demoralize the people who love you and have helped you.
3) Your enemies would triumph. Your cause would be lost.
4) The fourth and final point, the thing that all this was leading up to, is this: you probably won't do it, and morbidly thinking about it all the time will just sap your energy. Let me elaborate.
The fact is that for most people the little things in life...the feeling of air on your skin, the way grass smells... are collectively so profound and so satisfying that you could never bear to put them behind you. There must be a reason why so many people consider suicide and so few people actually do it. I think the reason is that we're hot-wired to enjoy our senses. We're hot-wired to be survivors. Think about suicide all you want but the overwhelming odds are that you won't do it.
Now if you're not going to do it, then thinking about it all the time is an energy drain. If you're going to slog through life anyway...and the statistics say that you will...then you'd be foolish to spend time walking around with the ball and chain of despair around you. If you're going to persevere through all that misery anyway then you may as well charge into it with both fists swinging.
My hunch is that when a person finally and definitively commits to living, no matter how miserable it gets, then he feels a burden removed from his shoulders. The problems that were bothering him seem easier to deal with because he can devote his total energy to them. That's the harm brought about by thoughts of suicide, that they take a person who may have an energy deficit and steal even more energy from him.
What do you think?
