Planning your exit

[jobaba]

Originally Posted by Sonic_Spork

Suffering.

Long story short, that's it right there. When your life is filled with suffering and you don't see any end in sight.

And suffering is an intensely subjective business. Tell ya what I do NOT recommend... If you are someone who values life, as I do and as you seem to do, do NOT get involved with a person who is miserable and try to make it your mission to persuade them that life is worth living.

I have wasted literal decades of my life trying.

Eventually, none of my efforts to be like, "See? Everything is great! Life can be so rewarding!" ever made a dent. If there were not enough reasons externally to writhe in pain and angst, this person would make some. If he didn't have cancer, he'd become a cancer to himself and everyone around him. Why? I don't know. Some people in the world are just LIKE THAT.

And you know, it got to a point in these situations I just had to be like, "I can't be around this anymore, I can't be responsible for constantly talking this person off a ledge, and if I go and this person ends themselves I'm just going to have to make peace with that." I mean, we put down suffering animals. We let them have a humane exit from this life when we don't have the means to give them a pain free life, when healing them is beyond us. Death might have been a kinder fate than having to keep on living, for this person I'm thinking of...he certainly thinks so. He just cannot quite bring himself to end his life, though he has tried.

We act like death is not an inevitable thing for each and every one of us! What counts is what happens between now and then...if you have every reason to believe it will be nothing but pain and suffering (experiencing it, causing it) then why would a person want to endure that or inflict it?

The main exception I make to this, are situations where it SEEMS like there is no end to suffering but actually the person's perspective is just too limited to see it. I do think it's tragic in particular for the young, because what's in front of them can seem endless and infinite but it really isn't. Things really might get better if they hang in there and let them.

Unfortunately, I know somebody in this situation and it's true.

Those people either 1) are really just crying for attention, and will not attempt suicide, or 2) they will attempt it and there's not that much you can do.

My friend falls in the 1st category.

As a generality, most people are able to think in terms of relative and not absolute.

Like ... "Listen I hate my low paying, brutal job and my wife left me, and I have no relationships with my kids."

But is death really worse? What is the worst case scenario in life? Retiring with less than $200,000 in your 401K. Don't make me die from laughter.

But when you make suggestions to somebody and they're like ... 'I don't care, nothing matters.' Well then, there's not much you can do.

As a matter of fact, the friend that I know was whining to his family so much about it, that they cut him off from communication, and that seems for the time being to have improved him. He didn't want that result.

[Ellwood]

Had a very dear friend like that who sank into depression and desire to live after his parents passed. Very intelligent man who was an engineer who had plenty of money. No friends other than those from high school, never married or had heirs. Physically let himself go, gained enormous amount of weight, became reclusive, stopped an contact with the few friends he had and had a heart attack and died alone. He was an only child so the heirs came out of the woodwork when he passed. Has bothered me for years.