Don’t Kill Yourself

It may seem bleak, but sometimes you just need to gain a new perspective

If your contemplating suicide or if you have already made up your mind I probably wont change your mind with this talk. You find life too difficult, too painful and I understand how you feel. If you are determined, you will follow through whether you do it on your own or get the government to help.

But there are a few things I want to talk to you about so that you put it on hold for awhile, in order to give you a chance to see if that’s what you really want.

I don’t know if you are aware, but so many people have thought about killing themselves. I met a person who said he woke up every day and said to himself, I want to die. But 30 years later, he’s still alive and doesn’t think that anymore. He never attempted suicide or even made vague plans. He just thought about doing it. He was able to work out his issues and give up on his suicidal ideation. I don’t think this is a unique example. More people than you think have felt pressured or depressed and didn’t want to face their fears anymore and thought about killing themselves.

I have the firm conviction that it is crucial that you live your life for as long as is naturally possible, because you are an emanation of the universe. You are part of creation. So be a part of it and merge with it. Instead of killing your body, why not kill your ego instead?

It’s not as bad as you think

Don’t cling to your smaller self. Your life isnt as tragic as you think it is. If you lose a girlfriend, its not the end of the world. You can experience the pain of loss and then move past it. There are other girls.

Its better not to get hung up on things. And try not to be a perfectionist. The world isn’t perfect and you don’t need to be either.

Its our flaws that make us perfect. Through our terrible experiences, we gain wisdom and compassion for ourselves and others. If we had no adversity, we wouldn’t develop. We would be stuck in a mental coma.

There is an ancient Chinese story about a farmer who loses his horse. People say to him that its too bad. The farmer says, we ll see. Then the horse returns with a herd of horses. People tell him hes lucky. He says, we ll see. His son rides a new horse, falls off and breaks his leg. Again people say its too bad. He says, we ll see. The military comes around to draft people into the military, only able bodied men are taken. Here he is, seemingly lucky again.

So there are rises and falls in life. Nobody is successful all the time. Even the best sports teams lose some games during the season.

You just live your life and try to do the best you can and accept you’re not perfect. Every day isn’t going to be sunny, there’s going to be clouds. What’s wrong with the clouds? Its all a part of it.

Sometimes when one thing goes wrong you want to die. You take that one issue and blow it out of proportion and you don’t see all the good things, everything that went right in the same day.

Don’t allow a bad day or a bad year to decide your end. Even if you struggle for 20 years, you may be able to work through it. But if you kill yourself, you will only leave this dimension in pain.

Our minds flicker from one idea to the next. It jumps around. You can be happy right now and miserable a minute later. Especially in our youth we make rash decisions without having all the information. We don’t know that what seems so important in this moment is only a flash in the pan.

Fight for life no matter what the obstacles

I can’t know for certain if all other species have a death wish or not, but they don’t seem to. Every animal, insect, and plant does everything in its power to survive. A weed will grow between the cracks in a sidewalk. We as humans are able to over ride that survival instinct by turning our own minds against ourselves.

Why do we do that? Because we only have a certain tolerance for suffering, and once we’ve surpassed that thresh hold, we give up and turn away from the pain. We think that by annihilating ourselves we can escape the suffering.

What is the suffering all about ? It’s not the things that happen to us. Its the way we deal with it. Two people can have the very same trauma, and respond in completely different ways.

Effective therapists can be useful to help you work things out, but you need to discover why you are turning against yourself, see your worth and find your meaning.

I’m not a proponent of health care professionals taking care of my mental health. I see myself as the person who is responsible for that. I have a distrust for people who have had over a hundred years of modern psychology or psychiatry to straighten everything out and they haven’t done a very good job of it. Our society has a rampant epidemic of mental disorders. And a person could argue that if these professionals don’t take an active role in resisting government assisted suicide, their industry has admitted that they don’t have any answers.

But you can’t blame them entirely. They are just the people who are there to put the band aides on the afflicted. Our suffering is caused generally by the human condition. Society causes harm to people with its rigid rules of conformity and the individuals cause harm to themselves and others by conforming or not being able to resist effectively. They go against their nature and end up miserable.

Most people are not living up to their potential and know deep down something is wrong. They have no meaning.

Basically, most of us are able to work out our own problems if we are willing to understand ourselves. Instead of living in denial or becoming angry, look into your subconscious. Allow the suppressed thoughts to come up. Clean the garbage out of your mind. Meditate and go for walks in nature.

If you were to seek out professional help to resolve your issues, I would suggest a few things so that you are not setting yourself up for failure. Seek out a successful therapist who has a stable character and a good track record of helping people. Of course avoid those who may seem to be too enthusiastic about helping you to commit suicide.

Do governments really care? Why are they encouraging this?

And something to think about: just because governments sanction it, doesn’t mean its right. Whether you are suffering mentally or physically. They may think they are doing the right thing… that they have compassion for those who are suffering, but they are involved in cutting off someones life prematurely. There could be nefarious reasons also. If governments are going to do this, it can’t be a matter of just filling out forms and your gone the next day. There needs to be a lengthy process, sort of like a cooling off period, that allows the person time to consider his or her decision and it needs to be overseen by a court, so there wont be mistakes made.

Regarding people who want to die because they have a terminal disease and the can’t bear it anymore: I have empathy for them. I think they should be allowed to be taken off of machines that are keeping them alive. But I don’t think its right to encourage people to die because they are in pain.

Physical pain can be managed with pain killers as well as the mind. There have been surgeries where the patient has been operated on without anesthetics and have been able to tolerate the pain. And people have ways of managing pain with their minds. Not to minimize serious pain, but I will give a small example: If you have an ingrown toenail and someone is digging around and cutting your skin. If you don’t look at the surgery, but instead do something else with your attention, it doesn’t hurt.

I understand that there can be more severe pain, but I don’t agree with allowing someone to cut their own lives short. However, the reality is this is happening in some places, so again, there has to be a legal process that analyzes whether the pain is severe enough and of course would require the consent of the patient. It cant be just a signature from a patient and a doctor.

There are some considerations to having safeguards. You can’t rely only on individuals to make decisions that are life ending whether it be for physical or psychological issues, because of their state of mind in that moment. You’re really not in your right mind if you want to kill yourself.

And who gets to decide about someone who doesn’t have the mental capacity to decide? Are you really going to give the power of attorney the decision making capability?

Ethics. Health industrial complex. What could possibly go wrong?

How about a hypothetical situation, where an unethical doctor encourages a patient to sign a body part donor card and then a euthanasia form too. He or she could make big money selling organs. This could even become an institutionalized industry run by government, and the medical system with mental health professionals participating. Do you want to give up your life in this way for someone else’s profit?

And what if you are experiencing severe pain and you are only going to live another week, but you still want to experience life for that time. Will there be a government or hospital death panel in the future that decides that it’s taking too many resources to keep you alive? What if they send in a social worker who determines that you are suffering too much and then orders your execution? it would be easy for a health worker to get you to sign the paperwork to end your life. Have you ever gone into surgery, and there are people telling you to fill out forms and you don’t know what you are signing? I have. During pre op and post op.

Realize that giving up your life is not the answer

Now let’s get back to why you shouldn’t kill yourself. You shouldn’t be making an extreme and rash decision to end your life? Are you that sure of yourself to know there would be no regrets?

I realize that you may really want to die because you are experiencing mental anguish or physical suffering. Its sad. But is death the best solution, or is it only a convenient solution to what you perceive as a desperate problem? . Shouldn’t you at least stick around and see if you can squeeze more out of life?