compassion | A Pilgrim's Odyssey

Suicide is not a modern problem. Talking about it openly may be the result of the relaxed attitudes of contemporary culture, but people have been taking their own lives for centuries. In fact, the prophet Elijah expresses suicidal thoughts in the Bible. Yet, he is regarded as one of the most remarkable men who walked the earth. From raising a widow’s son from the dead to fighting against a tyrannical monarchy, Elijah’s accomplishments would put most of the comparatively small scale achievements of everyday mortals to shame.

But Elijah was all too human, just like all of us are. And, being so, he succumbed to the hopelessness and despair that envelops the weary spirit in the appropriately named dark nights of the soul.

In I Kings 19:4, it is written, of Elijah, “He sat down under the solitary broom tree and prayed that he might die. ‘I have had enough,’ he said, ‘Take my life, for I am no better than my ancestors who have already died.'”

God’s promise to be an “ever present help in times of trouble” is exemplified in Elijah’s story for while Elijah slept, God sent an angel to him to strengthen him with food and water.

However, there are times when the promises of God seem more like empty words than something solid that one can rely upon. For those who believe there is no God, there are no promises to fall back on- and, in a way, maybe that’s easier to bear than imagining one has been abandoned by one’s Creator.

Regardless of spiritual or religious beliefs, though, suicide is at its core a problem encompassing all of humanity. Much of the time, even now, it’s pushed aside or reframed in such a way that its seriousness is diluted. From “a coward’s way out” to “a permanent solution to a temporary problem,” trite and often hurtful sayings abound, none of which serve any real purpose other than adding guilt or shame to the already broken spirit of the person contemplating ending his or her life.

I know the feeling of hopelessness that leads to thinking of taking one’s life all too well because I have experienced it first-hand. Many others have who are either too proud or too ashamed to admit it, but I see no reason in writing at all unless one comes from a place of truth.

Those who, like me and millions of others, have thought of taking our own lives are in stellar company. The prophet Elijah is only the beginning of a long list of people, many of whom were famous, successful, and wealthy who took their own lives.

Iconic American author Ernest Hemingway took his own life with a single gunshot to the head, ending the earthly existence of a man who had won both the Pulitzer and Nobel prizes and whom many critics called “the greatest writer of the 20th Century.”

Although the choice he made puzzled and dismayed many, it was his way of creating his own ending to the book of his life. The majority of those who read his fiction know little of the struggles fought by Hemingway behind the scenes, but chapters filled with illness and great physical and emotional anguish and suffering finally took their toll on him.

Poets Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, both rare geniuses with distinctive voices that travel through the decades of time, made the choice to take their own lives. Although we can shrug off such incidents by ascribing them to mental illness or just being “nuts,” doing so only demonstrates our intellectual laziness and lack of empathy. Ridiculing, scoffing at, minimizing and dismissing serious subjects only makes one look shallow and callous. It doesn’t add to one’s stature in the eyes of others, however much it might do so in one’s own mind.

All earthly life is precious, and this includes all human life. Thus, when it is lost, it should be regarded as a tragedy, particularly if it could have been prevented.

And much of the time, it can be. We mortals minimize the damage we do to one another by failing to show understanding where it is needed. Those little acts of kindness, both random and not-so-random, that we all too often claim we don’t have time for, are often the very acts that could and would prevent a suicide.

Anne Sexton, another winner of the Pulitzer prize, suffered from depression and bipolar disorder. In the note she left behind, she wrote, in her signature scathing tone, “I could admit that I am only a coward crying me me me and not mention the little gnats, the moths, forced by circumstance, to **** on the electric bulb.” Sexton’s genius is undeniable from the writing she left behind, but with a single act, her brilliant literary voice was forever silenced.

Virginia Woolf, rare visionary and pioneer of the stream of consciousness, silenced her voice, as well. Yet her single act cannot negate her status as one of the most important of 20th Century modernist authors.

It’s ironic that so many whose work we regard with great acclaim and even reverence committed a final act that so many tend to regard with scorn, disdain, or a little of both.

We look towards Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings with awe, immersing ourselves in captivating starry nights and ebullient sunflowers, rarely remembering that the ingenious artist who gave us these masterpieces shot himself in the chest in a field and died two days later.

Our failure to properly address a problem that has robbed our world of so much beauty, creativity, and genius is egregious at best and inexcusable at worst.

We worship the creations of genius but fail to respect or care about the creators themselves. Is it any wonder then that the “average” man or woman who is suicidal receives so little empathy?

At this point, after centuries of being mocked, pushed under the carpet or excused via untenable justifications, suicide has reached what I would call a point of crisis. I became aware of this fully when I read an article about a 28-year-old woman who is ending her life by euthanasia this Spring. The woman, who lives in the Netherlands, is not scoffed at but rather aided in her choice by a government that has made it legal for someone to take decisive steps to end their lives, including being given the proper assistance to complete it.

While I am not trying to make this political, I do think that it shows something deeply wrong in a world if we can encourage suicide to the point of assisting in its completion yet can’t find effective ways to successfully dissuade someone from wanting to commit it in the first place.

Author William Styron, a man well acquainted with the kind of all-encompassing depression that leads to suicide once wrote, “The pain of depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many instances because its anguish can no longer be borne.” He went on to say, “The prevention of many suicides will continue to be hindered until there is a general awareness of the nature of this pain.”

Styron, who ultimately succumbed to pneumonia and not suicide, is probably best known for his absorbing novels, yet it is his 84 page memoir, Darkness Visible, that elevates him from brilliant novelist to a translator of mental illness and mental health advocate for both his own time and future times. The clarity and openness with which Styron approached his own struggles with mental illness was something that writers before him who had hinted at such matters, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, had not done. Styron was willing to open himself up with the hope that, in doing so, he would help someone else who was suffering. He cared less about what the general public thought and more about who his words would reach.

Sadly, in spite of awe inspiring progressions in technology and multiple societal advances, we haven’t ever been able or willing to look at suicide as a problem that is less individual and more collective. We haven’t yet understood the link between one person’s pain and the pain of everyone around that person and how not adequately dealing with pain- not merely on an individual level but collectively- causes suicides and other tragedies.

And, yes, it helps to believe in a God that you can cry out to, but in leaving things strictly up to God or any Higher Power, we manage to absolve ourselves of our individual responsibility to take a problem like suicide seriously. By seeing it as “not our problem,” we are managing to make it more of a problem for ourselves and every mortal who walks this earth than it ever has been before. For now, in some countries and places, you can make an appointment to end your life as one might for a routine physical, and with the ostensible “normalization” of an act that is far from normal, I believe we have removed ourselves more from kinship with the human condition than ever before.

Suicide may have been as much of a problem in the old world but it’s only in a desensitized society where heartlessness has been crowned Queen and Apathy is her lady-in-waiting that one could make an appointment with a doctor to help one complete it.

Peace and blessings,

Sascha

(Photography is by Swedish Fine Art Photographer Gabriel Isak )

Most of us try not to talk too much about it, and it’s most likely because talking about things often makes them worse rather than helping them, but the darkness that descends upon the world after Christmas must certainly be one of the most depressing of all global events. The fact it happens every year, without fail, yet is consistently swept under the carpet, as if it’s simply par for the course, is even more tragic.

I once heard someone say that it’s the Lights of Christmas that make it such a joyful and merry time. I suppose, discounting the birth of Jesus, which is intended to be the reason for Christmas, but is mostly forgotten these days amid Santas, elves, and Grinches, the twinkling lights deserve credit as much as anything else for the festive atmosphere, redolent with the smell of calorie-laden treats and the sound of mirthful Christmas music wafting through the streets.

After all, originally, the Lights of Christmas were supposed to be representative of Jesus being the Light of the World, and, in centuries long gone by, Christmas trees were often decorated with lit candles rather than the strands of light most of us use today. What began as symbolic and somewhat understated tree decorations has, through the years, become nothing short of a cultural phenomenon. For the Christmas lights not only embellish the outside and inside of peoples’ homes and businesses but there are even gardens, parks, and similar venues where entire events are inspired by and centered around holiday lights.

And if it is indeed these resplendent Lights of Christmas that inspire the world to adopt a mindset of peace and good will to men, that encourage people who rarely perform a deed of kindness for anyone to seek out ways to show kindness to those who need it most, is there not a way to make the Lights of Christmas come alive in other seasons, too?

Although darkness has its place and, without it, one must question whether the light would be embraced with such fervor, if decorating common, everyday things such as trees and houses with lights makes humankind behave much better all-around than it usually does, what harm could there possibly be in finding a way to make the Lights of Christmas an everyday event?

Now before anyone imagines I’ve got my head up in the clouds or tries to “bring me back down to earth” by admonishing me to be “realistic,” I want to point out that if something won’t harm anyone and might possibly do some real good, what is the objection?

Many, if not most, of us recall how excited we were as children when Christmas season started every year. If you’re anything like me, you have memories, possibly involving dear ones now gone, of excitedly cruising through neighborhoods in order to admire the splendor of the Christmas lights.

Did you ever wish that you could capture everything you felt at those times in a bottle so that you could take it out later and relive those magical moments in time? I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve closed my eyes and wanted to transport myself back to those Christmases of times long past, where strands of clear and multi-colored lights seemed to illuminate everything, making me feel that, at least at that moment, all was as it should be in the world.

There really isn’t anything that’s more of a let down than the after Christmas atmosphere. From discount tables at retail stores where holiday themed candles, toys and other gifts that weren’t desirable enough to be bought that particular year are piled in disorderly heaps to the bare trees, tossed carelessly on the curbs outside of peoples’ houses, the after Christmas sentiment is one of sadness, bittersweet nostalgia for what could have been or what once was, and general melancholia.

The very air we breathe, once the New Year has been heralded in and all signs of Christmas have vanished, seems heavy with despair.

It’s as if the world that rejoiced before is now weeping, and, no matter what you and I and others may pretend, many of us weep with it. Little do most of us know that the lights are one of the key elements missing from our lives. The lights were more than merely lights – they were a reminder that darkness will never prevail and that even if it only happens once a year – so far, at least – people are capable of coming together to create a more beautiful, kinder, and better world.

Peace and Blessings,

Sascha 🕊

Image: “The Hope of Christmas” by Terry F.

A Pilgrim's Odyssey

Tag Archives: compassion

Suicide – An Old Problem in A Brave New World

Of Christmas Lights and A World Now In Darkness

My Journey of Brokenness and Grace