Today is my 43rd
birthday. When I was 34 years old, I walked along a narrow river through the city
of Nanning in the south of China. I was lonely and depressed,
no matter the PhD degree I had recently obtained, my freedom, the beauty all
around, the women I could easily befriend wherever.
I came to the conclusion that my
life is not worth its suffering, and that it must either change, that I must
change, or it is idiotic to go on living. I asked myself:
“How long will you go on just because you are afraid of dying? Will you
go on and on just in order to then kick the bucket after perhaps 60 years anyway?
Such a scenario is a pretty bad deal, especially considering that you could
have finished it much earlier.”
I considered something that
leads straight to a more serious, indeed a deadly serious conclusion:
“You are 34 now, very intelligent, extremely educated, strong, they say
beautiful; you could have whatever you want, yet none of it has the ultimate
purpose, that deeper ‘meaning’ you somehow cannot stop to demand. Surely, given
this situation after 34 years, if in yet another big chunk of time there is still
no improvement, you must admit that improvement is highly unlikely to ever
happen. Hope will be a mere prolonging of suffering, a cowardly failure to act
rationally.”
Dong Qiao in Nanning, 2006, close to
the place where and at the time when I decided to commit suicide if in eight
years life should still be the same drag it had been for the previous decades.
And so, in deadly serious
conclusion, I gave myself an ultimatum, a promise, a birthday present:
“34 now, so let’s turn the numbers around and say that if with 43 you
are still not enjoying this trip, ending it must be considered very seriously; yes,
you must end it then.”
I knew I could theoretically
“end” the trip by “merely” changing it. But ask: Why do almost all, also those
who blame their situation on outside circumstances such as financial troubles, commit
suicide without first emptying their bank account or rob a bank and then go on
a drug fueled party spree, and then afterwards kill themselves? What bad could
happen except getting killed? What “bad” can happen but that you may discover a
new way of life which you actually enjoy and which is perhaps even sustainable;
you would not be the first criminal thinking to himself “Gee, I can’t believe I
got away with that, and look at me now still twenty years later.” What worse
can happen but that even such most radical change leads to darkness again after
a short while, at which point you can still kill yourself?
The reason why we do not
do such, why we do not quit our job and tell our family “good bye, I am off to India”
is not that we are considerate of the suffering we maybe cause to others, nor is
it about that drugs supposedly do not make happy. Of course drugs make happy,
especially if you do not need to worry about long term consequences, which you
do not need to when committing suicide soon anyway. Such answers, especially if
they pretend to be concerned with the suffering of others, are politically
correct nonsense. In fact, those close to you are more likely to start a better
life for themselves if shown the strength of your going to India to try living with the holy
men. Usually, even your suicide will be a crisis that opens their eyes, that
improves their lives in the long term.
The reason why people
hardly ever change in such ways is mainly that we are afraid of such bold steps
to freedom. We are more afraid of them than of continued suffering and even
dying. We know that we will not dare to actually quit our job tomorrow morning and
just walk away south. Not now, maybe next year, but then again not, because it
will be next year’s “now” at that point. And we ‘know’ this; in some way we are
aware of that we are too chicken to do such, and therefore, such strong change
is just not a practical solution. It is only a step that “could theoretically be taken”, but practically, suicide, a much more
radical step, is taken instead. A quick suicide allows us to save face and get
out of all the guilt feelings and fears still to come.
The fear of harsh
judgment, yes even the fear of ending up penniless is stronger than the fear of
death! Seen in this way, suicide is indeed cowardly and embarrassingly silly,
but it is no sillier or more cowardly than simply staying alive: we are animals
driven by emotions whatever we do. This irrationality is one reason for why
pseudo rational arguments such as when based on the purportedly great value of
life, do not help suicidal people. And people who argue like that do not truly
want rationality either. A rational person with moral values who wants to kill
herself may decide to take a bunch of bad people with her, thus starting a
killing spree reserving the last bullet for herself. Surely, that is not what the
suicide hotline counselor has in mind.
Big changes are usually
not a practical alternative. Moreover, not even small changes can be made, because
we know, and this is part of the depression, that we won’t change, that people almost
never change themselves consciously in deep ways. Expecting that nothing will
change, that again and again still in years to come we will be realizing to
have had no substantial change, no improvement, suicide is taken as the
practical way out.
I refuse to find much
wrong with this! I refuse to tell the depressed that he is all wrong and should
simply snap out of it. I know how to talk to somebody like that 34 year old. He
is not stupid and wants to be taken seriously, his perspective is a valid view.
Yes, indeed, suicide is a way out. It
was my way out, too!
Notice that time is an
important issue here, for example the absence of a fixed length of time, a
certain period that can be easily considered. The depressed mind often
considers an ongoing dread with no end in sight. That is why I gave myself a
certain time window, namely from 34 to 43.
Death is your best friend;
many wise understood this, and many who understood this, obtained wisdom
through this understanding. And therefore, I turned to him, to death, to
suicide at 43. I knew that this may help to change me, because from then on,
with only just above eight more years to live anyway, much like with the few
remaining years of a terminally ill person, the unimportant is actually, practically rejected. I am dead in a few
years – why should I worry about all that which makes me unhappy? With death
close by, what makes life bearable or even worth living is no longer something left
for after retirement, postponed until the time is ripe, which usually is never.
Change is easier, it is basically automatic in the face of impending death.
With suicide thus
accepted, and change thus enabled, these two, suicide and change, are no longer
opposites, not mutually exclusive choices. Suicide and change become each
other, because the deep change I desire involves the killing of parts of
myself, my desires, my delusions, the killing of much if not almost all of what
I identify with, my self-identification, my self – thus,
“suicide”, the killing of my self myself. For example, meditation can be seen
as a way of killing
my incessant inner voice.
And so, over the years, I
have made suicide an important topic for me, not just because it is an
increasingly important topic anyway, but in order to kill myself. And now, I
have changed through that, I have killed that 34 year old, because he was unfit
for living, not worth even to him himself.
Now, the 43 year old is
something different, something the 50 year old will perhaps describe as utterly
mistaken, still or again, when he finally shoots himself perhaps. Do not
exclaim “Halleluiah, he has overcome that
evil disease of suicidal ideation.” Nonsense! I am standing on the ledge; the
view from here is something to behold – perhaps life is only enjoyable right
here on the ledge, at least for me.
What parts of myself did I
kill? I am now able to seriously argue that almost everything I say is wrong
and misleading. Actually, I chickened out and embarked on a ridiculous tour de
force of rationalization. I merely got older. Otherwise, I am the same, a
coward who now deludes himself in slightly more sophisticated ways, making a
big deal out of his obsessions along the way, even just another pathetic
wannabe smartass on the internet, trying to cash out on emotional coming-outs
and deservedly failing. But watch this pretentious, narcissist gesture of
pseudo-intellectual meta-meta level overreach:
Precisely, I say,
precisely! The guy who refused such charges is dead; death gave him the
strength to kill himself, and being dead gives his remains the strength to fear
no more – this is the truth also of those holy men.
-------Suicide Series:
Suicide: Life Ends Six Meters Above the
Ground
A
Deadly Proof Is Published - Is Your Mind Stable Enough To Read It?
Approaching
Suicide Positively
Identity
Crisis: Authenticity vs Suppression Of Cognitive Dissonance
