Monday 20 August 2012

A Little Note on Suicide.

Tony Scott’s suicide prompts the obvious question: why did he do it? The first and most obvious answer is ‘because he didn’t want to live any more.’ Clearly, it isn’t that simple. We hear stories of people from more spiritually aware cultures who choose to sit down and wait to die, but that doesn’t happen in the west where the obsession with material existence is all-consuming. To look for the answer you have to start with the preceding level, where the answer is ‘because the pain of living was unbearable or about to become so.’ That’s where the complications start, and it isn’t my place to indulge in pointless speculation.

I will say this, though. I came to the verge of suicide once in my life. I needn’t go into the cause, but the escape was interesting. The decision was made and the deed about to be done, and then I fell asleep. I’ve often wondered whether some guardian angel was looking out for me that night, but I suspect the reason I fell asleep was more prosaic. I suspect that some deeper part of me realised that while the pain of living was unbearable at the time, I didn’t actually not want to live any more. The two things aren't quite the same.

2 comments:

Wendy S. said...

I've also felt suicidal a long time ago but I still wake up wishing I wasn't alive sometimes because of extreme mental angst. And then there are the days that aren't quite blissful but definitely make me stop and be grateful I'm not dying or dead. You made an important point on life being just so full of pain that one wishes they were dead to actually be dead. We wish to end the pain but not our lives is sometimes forgotten.

JJ said...

I suppose a lot depends on whether you're essentially am optimist or a pessimist. Even when the pain is bad, the confirmed optimist retains a glimmer of belief somewhere deep inside that a way out will be found, or that things will simply improve one way or another. That's why I think optimists sometimes have more difficult lives. They keep pushing through the suffering, come what may.