Global Suicide Rates At Record High

Full Moon Colorized ©2018 Helena-Sophia Exel

First off, this headline is not taken from any other outlet, nor is it from another blog, and neither from some public health institute. That is not to say that You won't find this headline in any of these, ever. The opposite is true. The likeliness of this headline crossing Your eyes increases on a daily level. Factually, at the same rate global suicide rates increase. Of course You can ask me how I arrive at that conclusion and if I could prove it. Keep asking though, it will get You to the point where You will see the light, so to speak.

To settle the headline first, it is derived out of the fact, that all known countries on Earth experience an increase in suicides. What would be left for You to ask is "Why?" Why are more people than ever before taking their own life? Well, the simplest answer to this question comes in form of another question: "Maybe they don't see their 'lives' as such any longer?" Okay, wait, that might be a bit much. Let's try that again: "Maybe they don't have a life any more?" Better? How about: "Maybe they don't want their 'lives' any more?"

For the longest time I have been of the conviction, that it takes some very special circumstances, some very depressing situations, an incurable fatal disease - an amplified state of hopelessness, fear and despair to pull the plug on oneself. Or all of the above. But before I go any deeper into the matter, I would like to give You an analogy of what I have come to believe suicide ultimately constitutes: 'Suicide is a very much like a combination lock that will open when all the numbers match the lock' In this analogy, the numbers represent the circumstances and the open lock the final act of suicide.

Have You ever thought of taking Your own life? No, You don't have to answer this question in the comment section. No need. It is a rhetorical question anyways. Because it is likely that every human being has at one point has had it with its life. The reasons therefore might be ridiculous from the point of view of a grounded, at inner peace person. Okay, not ridiculous, but more like incomprehensible. A human being that is 'doing well', can likely not imagine that there are people for whom the opposite is true. The proverbial pink glasses come to mind. "If I am doing great - so must everybody else". However, that this is a quite naive view point at best and a callous one at worst, very telling of the inability to empathize with fellow human beings that experience extreme hardship.

As my own qualification to philosophy about this important topic shall serve my own confrontation with suicide. Since many years, this question has been around on and off - at times on a daily basis and then only occasionally. But is has never left me alone for long. Not since the two most important human beings in my life departed way too early for my well being. Imagine another human being that loves You just the way You are. No complaints ever. Only unconditional love. That, times two in short succession will give You an idea. It will also lead to the important next part of the matter of taking one's own life. The 'life' part that is. Herein lies the greatest depth of the human condition. The moment when a human being does no longer consider 'life' as 'worth living', but the opposite, that life has become a burden, a pain, suffering and despair, that it is no longer worth keeping at it.

Dissecting that, one needs of course to know first, what a human being who considers its own life no longer worth living, did consider at one point a worthwhile life. It is hard to imagine that there could be someone, who never experienced any joy in life, for whom there was never any joyful, interesting, exciting and stoking times at all. Even as a fictitious character, the young man from the cult movie 'Harold and Maude', that staged his various suicides to annoy his mother and chase away potential future brides, was at one point in love with life in form of another human being. A human being that was so full of life that it had developed the habit to frequent the graveyard and partake as 'unknown mourner' in funerals.

So, one must take it for more or less granted, that anybody that committed suicide did at one point have a life that did not wake this desire to leave. I certainly do not belong to the group of people who believe that every human being that committed suicide was mentally ill in one way or another. Rather the other way around. In today's time, mental illness appears to be a prerequisite to survive the daily insanity a human being has to endure. As I stated a many times before, I firmly believe that it is no measure of health not to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. For as the hallmark of a well adjusted human being to a profoundly sick society will most likely not consider its society as profoundly sick, or any shade of it.

Back to the combination lock analogy for suicide. On this side of the screen, the lock has a large amount of individual 'numbers'. You may just imagine a lock with any amount of single digits, which will serve as triggers. As pointed out above, the profoundly sick society provides a few numbers by default. In no specific order, these are homelessness, bankruptcy, illnesses from living a well adjusted life to aforementioned society, to which must be counted mental illnesses, or better 'dysfunction' caused by addiction to 'social networking'. The preferred diet offered by the profoundly sick society constitutes everything that can be gobbled down fast. Fast food. No time for eating. Eating while driving. Eating while watching TV. There is a plethora of ailments arising from high volume consumption of what constitutes 'TV' and particularly the psychological addiction to so called 'news'. It is now well established that the dependency on watching 'news' equals the necessity for a junkie to get his fix.

Therefore, a large portion of the 'numbers' are dialed in correctly by default. A 'preset' of sorts, best imagined with a lock where 3/4 of the numbers are already dialed in. Only a few more are needed to open the lock - to initiate the act of suicide. The remaining quarter can easily be set by a combination of circumstances and I will here only refer to the suicide endemic among farmers in India due to the spread of GMO crops, both directly and indirectly. The consequences are most obvious when one is to look at the increase of suicides among this segment of the Indian population. And while it might be most obvious in India, it is certainly more complex in other countries.

How desperate must a Human Being be to commit suicide? It is one thing to explain the combination of 'unfortunate' circumstances that lead to suicide, but a whole different thing to attempt to look behind the ultimate reasoning that causes the Being to voluntarily exit. As two examples shall serve the most tragic suicide known to me and a personal take on why I have not undertaken this step myself. In the first case, a friend of a lifelong friend of mine took his life about ten years ago. He was a father of three young children. And I will not lay open the personal circumstances that lead to his desperation and subsequent suicide, but only to focus on the outcome. This father of three children that he verifiably had loved deeply, shot himself in the head on a Christmas Eve. Of course there are no words for this departure at a time when the family was supposedly in the preparations to celebrate Christmas. In retrospective, there was no indication of the impending suicide for his family and friends. It happened at the worst possible time out of the blue.

Even with an undetected mental illness, it is painfully hard to try to figure out why a father of three would take his own life at Christmas Eve. Not that any other day would have been better at that, but on the day the presents are given out, this had to be the worst thing to happen. To be forever reminded of this event come the holidays is a cruel punishment, if there is any terminology for such an outcome. This is not to imply that the father took his life to punish his family, but the inevitable outcome of this act. How could the children have experienced this? How could they ever had the ability of a grown up to reason about the event, if they were the hardest hit by the suicide? As I have moved out of the country in which it happened, I have lost contact over the years and do not know what became of the children ever since. It has not been on the top of my list to find that out, especially because I knew the father, the wife and the children only from a few short encounters. The connection to the family ended with this event.

So, one can never be sure what caused a person to end its life - even with a suicide note left behind, because what could possibly be contained in this note that would fully explain why someone took their own life? What would suffice to those left behind to accept this outcome? Could there ever suffice anything in the absence of a terminal illness that will inevitably lead to death and do that in a way that is unbearable, even with effective pain medication and the best of care? Are those left behind not always confronted with the doubt, that something could have been done to prevent the suicide? Especially if no obvious terminal illness was present at the time? But even with an illness that would 'qualify' the survivors to make mends with the outcome, it is never really an easy path to acceptance. As a most prominent example could serve the actor Robin Williams, who took his own life at a time in which it must have been inevitable by his own perception. For the majority of his fans it came as a shock, though.

Now to the reasons that might prevent someone from taking their own life. At that, I can only speak and write about myself, of course. In my case, the answer is 'Love'. It is the love for those that would be left behind that fills me and prevents me from an early exit. Although, while that might make sense for most people, I like to clarify that those left behind are not Human Beings. Of course I would leave behind those, too, but with my personal life circumstances well known to those, and no young children being part of my life, with the exception of my granddaughter, who might not be told about it, the Human Beings in my life would be able to accept my departure. They would know why, and no note or letter would ever have to be written. For the simple reason, that I my life is explanation enough to those potentially left behind.

It is the Love and Responsibility towards the most amazing Felines I have ever had the honor to be surrounded with. Those amazing Beings that know about my circumstances better than I could ever explain it to another Human Being. Because they don't need words, don't need to be told. They know at all times. They know when I am having a good time and when life has become once more too depressing to be joyful. And like in the above mentioned analogy with the combination lock, my Felines are each representing one space of this lock and therefore, as long as they live, the lock can never open and allow me to follow those that loved me so unconditionally to the other side. It for that reason that life at times is nothing but a comfortable prison, compared to the last smile in death my Love left me with. This smile has taken away all fear of death. What is therefore left behind, is only the Love and care for my Treasures. The knowledge about the fact that they would end up without a Human Being that cares as deeply for them and loves them as the Feline persons they are and not as some practical companions that keep the yard rodent free and entertain with their for Felines so unique and amazing ways.

Without my beloved Felines these lines would not be written - at least not by me. And to imagine that there could be another Human Being, whose life would have created the same circumstances from birth to the present day as the Universe created for me, is ineffably unimaginable. At that, it provides for an insight into Life per se, an insight that is now limited to an egoic and myopic view of the world, but an all inclusive world view, that can best only described with 'Being The Universe' and it is here where the cycle closes. To Be the Universe makes everything that happens in it part of whoever experiences this 'Being'. It generates the thoughts about why so many people chose to take their own lives, why life has become such an unbearable burden for so many. It is my philosophy and understanding that the mere contemplation about Being The Universe has the potential to bring about practical comfort in a world that has become so hostile to everything that makes a life worth living.