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Just a gentle reflection that may assist you in your advice giving
Its great that in the face of epic injustice and daily misery which you outlined in your postings, you find that life is worth living, or, that it is your duty to live (??). Its great that you have that perspective and choose life.
Its likely a good thing that you encourage you readers to 'live' at any cost, after all you wouldn't want to seriously engage with the subject at a deep level, or feel liable for someone's passing, very wise.
However, i think you strip others of the depth and width of their character, life experience, intellectual capacity, spiritual or cultural references, personhood (just for starters) when you suggest they should live, as you choose to do, in abjectness, if you're to be believed. It may be hard to believe but some folk have had an even more eventful and destructive life experiences than yourself, others feel simply that they have lived and learnt enough etc etc... or that they are not quite where they should be.
In addition if one is to be a Material-rationalist (i roughly mean 'this is it, so make the most of it'), but also insist on the duty to live (an expensive and often zero sum game for oneself and wider society), I see this position as incongruent and complex to maintain (but very interesting and engaging, hence me tapping out a few words).
Anyhow, don't blow a gasket, its just a few words which you're welcome to ignore.
Harper
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There's one big thing that you miss when it comes to our advice; we don't have a full picture of a person's life, experiences, culture or character. We have only what they tell us, and that is all we can work with.
People who come to us with questions about suicide are very, very rarely thinking rationally. They are often quite young. Sometimes it's because of a difficult life situation. Other times it's because of mental illness (those are the questions I tend to answer most because of my particular life experience). Our goal is to lift the fog that conceals the light after the darkness using our own life experiences as an example.
Many years ago, I posted an anonymous question to this website. It was a simple question on how to commit suicide painlessly, the same sort of question we get here on a regular basis. I gave no background, and I got several generic answers. Do you know what's funny about those generic answers? They were enough to tell me that someone, somewhere cares enough about me to take time to try to save me at a time when I felt the opposite was true.
By assuming that everyone has the same needs that you do and discounting our advice, you are depriving them of their individuality. What works for you will not necessarily work for them. You may need indepth discourse, but maybe they just need someone to tell them it gets better, or someone to tell them that it's possible to live a happy life with mental illness.
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Harper,
While you have been very eloquent in your writing; I believe you have missed the point in how most of us answer these questions.
Speaking just for myself I have been doing this for quite some time. Over the years the way in which I answer these questions has changed for I have learned one salient fact. These writers paint a picture, if they paint one at all, to try and convince us and themselves they are or will be doing the right thing. What they are really doing is asking for help, a last ditch effort by something inside them that is reaching out.
Knowing this most if not all of us answer them in a manner to give them hope and to point them to someplace they can get the help they are asking for. Some of us have even been where these writers are at when they write to us. By trying to pull them back from the edge many share that information with them. Telling them there is a light at the end of the tunnel, that all is not lost. So your writing that; "It may be hard to believe but some folk have had an even more eventful and destructive life experiences than yourself," is not only wrong it is unfair to those who share these experiences with those who write to us.
Basically I am an agnostic; someone who believes in a higher power but not necessarily a religious god. To that end I do believe we have a duty to live. A duty to ourselves to be all we can be. Yes there are pitfalls along the way. At times for some these pitfalls seem so monumental that they cannot be overcome. I have found that not to be true. What is needed to overcome them is the right help. That help is out there one just needs to ask the right people or person for it. This is what we try to do.
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Thank you Harper for your letter. I understand your points.
Personally, I have no problem with the fact that someone may want to end their life, not because I am cold and callous, but because I believe in reincarnation, and that when our soul has had enough of this current life, it's that person's personal decision whether to go now or wait for old age to take them. Our souls have a chance to come back in another life if our goal was not reached whether by someone killing us early on, an accident, or taking ones life.
I also realize that while there are those who have exhausted all options, there is a greater amount of depressed people today, a great majority of them young people, age 25 and under, who want to end their life and are asking how to do so. No one yet asking how to end their life has explained why. There are teens who admit they are so depressed they want advice how to get better cus they fear they might end their life otherwise... and this is over stuff like getting a failing grade in school, parents restricting them with rules, a breakup with boyfriend/girlfriend, from things that there are options, real options that have not yet been tried.
I have no way of knowing if the person simply asking how to die has tried anything else. The greater amount of people writing in on this particular site are mostly the young. The pre frontal cortex of the brain used for problem solving and making good solid decisions is not finishing developing until the mid 20's, a good reason why so many teens get themselves into trouble or do stupid stuff.
So, while there may be some who in their own lives and in their minds have become "programmed" or trained like horses, cows, sheep what to do, what is expected and they may answer out of a belief that they should "encourage the readers to 'live' at any cost" without any reason why, even though i may not feel that way, none of us can take the chance in case of back lash coming at us legally for assisting someone with advice on how to end their life.
Remember the life of Dr. Kevorkian? assisting people in ending their lives in a humane way? Even he interviewed and got to know the cases before agreeing to help them. You would never catch his assisting some college age gal to die because she wanted to cus her boyfriend broke up with her.
Lots of people are being slowly poisoned by the toxins and pollutions in our air, food and water and that is okay and allowed but if someone wants to end their life, the law will come down on us. This advice column is not the place to tackle such an issue as how to end one's life or the reasons why to do so or not. All we can do is assume the person is over reacting to their issue and attempt to get them to reach out for help/see other options which I believe a lot of these cases are.
I highly doubt that the greater majority of those writing in are people who have given much careful thought to their situation and still want to end their life.
I will end with sharing that my own father when mom asked for a divorce and left him, reacted immediately with trying to kill himsself twice, first with over dosing on pills, and second by hanging but a family member found him in time in each case. After some time he got over the heartache and went on to enjoy being grandfather to my 3 daughters, got active in two churches, did some community work, had several girlfriends and enjoyed many more h and are asking how to do so. These people like happy years of life. It would be a shame if someone had given him advice on how to end his life. He truly could tell me he enjoyed his life later after his attempts to end it before.
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Some thoughtful words, like your style. Too eloquent to ignore. Temper it with the fact that everyting I am doing now, all I've ever done and all I will ever do is to endeavour to create and impose meaning (something I wish to call 'my life') on the cold fact of my mere existence and being. And that is all any of us can ever do. It transcends sex, race, religion, creed, age, nationality...everything. There is no deeper meaning. Understood correctly, this is the most liberating idea on earth. Since when acknowledged we simply live our lives, engage in our loves, hates, projects and ambitions etc. And we stop asking the questions 'why?' or 'what does it all mean?' It does not 'mean' anything to anyone other than ourselves. Best wishes....if you still think that's appropriate! C.
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