People commit suicide believing that they haven’t the ability to continue on in this lifetime, and many people are affected. Family and friends of those who die under normal circumstances eventually heal. In death by suicide, the healing takes longer, there’s always a nagging suspicion that it could/should have been avoided if. . . . In years gone by, I felt sorry for everyone involved. However, in the ensuing years, I’ve learned that sorry is not the feeling to express, that Life is much bigger than anything we can imagine, that we all have our own path, and that there’s a thin veil between life and death. What’s interesting is that we tend to see suicide as being quick. When you think about it, however, there’s a slow form of suicide taking place every day and it’s not quick. The slow form of suicide is, “The destruction or ruin of one’s own interests”, as noted in dictionary.com, and it happens on a daily basis.
Many times we’re caught up in this “destruction or ruin of one’s own interests” taking place right where we are. For instance, when traveling we often spend time waiting at airports. There are people who find waiting extremely difficult and tend to make it diffcult for others sharing the same space. Someone gets terribly angry over a minor incident, and everyone around them is disturbed. Someone else says, “I’m going to drown my problems at the bar, and later returns sloshed. You see a child behaving badly, and the parents seem to not have a clue as to what to do, and so they do nothing. On it goes.
And then, in the midst of all this, and in sharp contrast, you see a man or woman sitting quietly, simply attending to the moment. Or you observe a teenager listening to music, tapping her/his feet to the beat. And there’s a well-dressed man reading a paper and pointing to an article for his wife to enjoy. And things feel calmer.
The books I read say that life can be wonderful, not a struggle. The longer I live the more I’m inclined to believe it, and to feel that if we would just spend enough quiet time alone, giving the same attention to the within as we do to the without, we would come to a bigger understanding about Life, and eventually come to understand and appreciate ourselves, others, and the world.