Two comments on the “Suicide/Love” post deserved to be mentioned – one is great and supremely profound, and another is misguided or so I feel.
Firstly for the profound, Dark Harf said:
If there’s nothing to live for, then what is there to die for?
If it’s meaningless to live, then what’s the meaning behind dying?
I got nothing better to add to that. It is that profound. Bravo. With a dash of dark humour, she goes into more detail in her post “Attempting Suicide“.
And for the misguided one, Ronnie said:
Suicide is not choice; it happens
when pain exceeds resources for coping with pain.Suicide is neither wrong nor right; it is not a defect of character; it is morally neutral. It is simply an imbalance of pain versus coping your ability to cope.
What might be bearable to someone else, may not be bearable to you.
Suicide IS NOT A CHOICE.
similar to BEING ATTRACTED to someone IS NOT A CHOICE, except suicide is in the context of one’s life & death.
The reason I feel that Ronnie’s statement is misguided is because suicide IS a choice. It’s definitely not a reflex action nor natural – even an animal at its most desperate would not kill itself. Don’t give me examples of lemmings or beached whales. That lemmings would commit suicide is a myth; whales do not beach themselves because they want to kill themselves, they beach because of confusion and disorientation.
Which brings us back to my point: suicide is a choice that only highly sentient beings, ie. humans can make. Ronnie also mentioned coping mechanisms to which I would like to say that no one is expected to cope with life’s difficulties on their own. We all reach out for that extra help now and again, be it friends and family, a therapist, or drugs for our mental conditions but not to kill ourselves with.
Yes life can be overwhelming sometimes but how we choose to cope with it is a choice. You can deal with it like most of us do, or you throw the towel in and off yourself. And therein lies the choice.
Live for love, or die for love? I’d rather live for love even if it takes me an entire lifetime to find it. Because even if I don’t find love, there’s so much more in life worth living for.
Technorati Tags: suicide, love, relationships
while i agree with you that one has the choice to deal with adversities & prevent suicide. i just feel that what you are offering here is a pre-emptive/preventive measure for a person prior to suicide itself (ie. depression or victimisation). What i mean is, at the point of one’s suicide tendency, the exceedingly unbearable pain could impair & even block judgment ability & loss of rational behaviour.
It’s like when you’re utterly drunk & you start to misbehave & talk crap to people around you.
or when a wussy guy is attracted to a gorgeous girl, he develops some tendencies like becoming nervous, losing himself, etc..
although coping resources such as counselling, drugs & therapy are preventive/preemptive for a person with depression, by the time he is on the verge of suicide (like a person being intoxicated with alcohol & high on drugs) & thus suicide becomes the eternal aspirin that relieves his pain.
When you differ from my comment, you are using your power of reasoning & rationality. Hence, within reasons my comments are misguided. Likewise, in the eyes of educated & rational individuals, suicide behaviour & the act itself is considered misguided.
choice is an act of will & reason…
at the point when one is at the verge on suicide, the pain is already so extreme that he will has been exhausted, & his reasoning becomes messed up…leading to emotional & irrational thought (ie. death relieves pain eternally).
hence, what i mean by suicide is not a choice.
ronnie: if you put it that way, then I will give that point to you. Though I still believe that before the inidividual even get to that most desperate stage, he/she has a choice to seek help.
There’s still a choice in my mind. But looks like we are never going to agree, so let’s agree to disagree.