Suicide

So. That's a scary title. 7 letters arranged into a specific combination and the fears and emotions it can stir up are really quite deep and powerful. I think it's time I examined it a little.

What could I possibly have to say about suicide? Well keep reading and find out. (Just to reassure you this is not a suicide note. Quite the opposite in fact. Do enjoy.)

Lets start off nice and safely. General facts and trivia. Nothing says inoffensive like the answers to pub quizzes (really bizarre pub quizzes about suicide...)

In India suicide is illegal. In Singapore you can be imprisoned for up to one year for attempting to commit suicide. Suicide was only decriminalized in Britain in 1961. It was decriminalized in the Republic of Ireland in 1993. A year before I was born.

Anyone else think that's quite strange? Suicide, the intentional ending of one's life, being against the law. Why?

Suicide has long been associated with immorality in the majority of societies due to (really again?) religion. The Abrahamic God's really don't like the whole ending your life thing. They much prefer ending your life for you with horrifically painful diseases and literally earth-shattering natural disasters. Suicide was seen as an offence against God himself and in England and Wales it was also an offence against the Crown. Seriously, up until around 1822 the property and possessions of someone who had committed suicide could be seized by the Crown. If you killed yourself the Queen had first dibs on your stuff.

So why is it thought to be wrong and immoral? Again it comes down to good old basic survival. Hard-wired into every living thing on Earth (barring mental disorders and other reasons) is an instinct to survive. Run up to a wild animal and it will either flee to safety or it will attempt to tear your limbs off all in a bid to survive and live to reproduce another day. Suicide is the antithesis of this. For a species to survive and thrive it's members kind of need to... well... not want to die. In human society it's been thought of as bad and immoral because if people kill themselves they are no longer capable of helping the group. This is bad. Just being around raises the probability of a group surviving simply because of the old adage "safety in numbers". If you are one of 10 humans living together and one of your group members kills themselves the probability that the next time a lion wants a snack he's going to snack on you, increases. You don't like this. You don't want to be eaten by a lion. You really don't want anyone else to kill themselves because the probability will increase even higher. You really want to put off everyone else from killing themselves. Suicide is now immoral in your little society.

If suicide is supposed to be the last thing on people's mind then why is it that between 800,000 and one million people die every year around the world by suicide? It's is the 10th leading cause of death in the world today.
(As a side note I just want to say that that I find that number truly abhorrent.)
There are numerous triggers. Mental health issues are usually the first thing people think of. That grey, scary, hazy area that people don't really understand. Then there's addictions and substance abuse, problem gambling, sexual abuse, psychological abuse, emotional abuse, all of the above and more.

(I'm purposefully leaving out medical euthanasia as I feel that this is a separate topic that has different considerations and the questions it raises aren't ones that I'm going to be able to answer in this post. Perhaps next time.)

Whether it's bi-polar, bullying, depression or a myriad of other potential afflictions, the mind is capable of reframing someone's life to the point that that person believes their life is not worth continuing.

I politely disagree with them.

I have thought a lot about suicide. Before anyone starts worrying or phoning helplines for me, I would like to clarify that I have never attempted to commit suicide and when I say I have considered it I mean I have considered it purely philosophically and ethically in the same way I consider the existence of God or the soul. I have asked myself "Why is suicide a bad thing? What circumstances would it take for me to want to kill myself? Why shouldn't I kill myself right now?" Questions like these occasionally swirl round my head but again just to clarify I am not depressed, I am not in trouble and I do not want to kill myself. My life is seriously great right now. I know I live in Finland but the winters are really not that bad.

So what answers do I have for those questions?

For me (I can only ever answer for me) suicide is a bad thing because it is not relief or escape it's nothingness. It is an end to feeling bad but that doesn't mean it feels good. Feeling good can only be achieved whilst you are living. On the other side is nothingness which is neither good or bad it's just... nothing. Incomprehensible to the human mind. Zero. Zilch. Nolla (that's Finnish if you didn't guess). Problems can be bad. They can be awful. They can be great dark pits full of demons dragging you down and submerging you but suicide isn't going to save you. What suicide does is drag other's down the pit with you.

Suicide is often thought of as being a selfish act which to me has always seemed a ridiculously callous thing to say. It's like saying someone stealing bread when they are at the point of starvation is very selfish of the thief. Well of course it is! They are desperate! In my opinion suicide is not selfish but it is usually done without the thought of the effects to other people. I don't call this selfish because it's understandable and I attach no blame to it but it is a fact that those "left behind" suffer. Even if the person truly had no-one and was alone in the world, the very fact that someone ends up killing themselves in the 21st century with all the help that could have potentially saved them is depressing for me. I don't care if they are a pretty teenage girl bullied to death or an alcoholic pensioner that just can't take the world any more. It's sad when someone dies. When their own desperation causes their death for me it feels doubly sad.

Suicide is bad because it hurts people.

What circumstances would it take for me to kill myself? (Medical euthanasia shall be dealt with another time) I have no idea. I don't know what it feels like to be at that point. I'm not going to try and guess because I doubt I would be able to truly imagine it. All I really know is that right now, at this point of time in my life I don't want to die and I would like to continue living for as long as I can. I would also like to think that if I was ever at the point where it seemed like the only option, someone would come to me and help me see the other options. The ones that won't result in my exit from this incredible world.

Talking of incredible world, have you seen how incredible the world is? Do you know we know more about the surface of the Moon than we do the very depths of the ocean? New species are discovered almost every week. Alien life has yet to be discovered. Why would I want to die when there is so much to learn, so much to see, so much to experience, so much to live for? When I do eventually die (at the ripe old age of 300 if I can manage it) the universe will still hold secrets that the future descendants of mankind will still be trying to solve. I will never know everything there is to know about everything. I am but a cog in the wheel of the most advanced species in existence. I am a (admittedly a very small) building block the future will be constructed on. I may not achieve anything noteworthy in my life but even by just existing I have altered the trajectory of photon beams, I have radiated heat, I have contributed to the universe. I want to continue to contribute for as long as possible. I don't want to be nothing quite yet.

So what should you do if you feel the cold dark fear creeping up on you or the relentless crushing weight of the world on top of you? What should you do if you start thinking that the world would be better off without you?

Don't ask me I'm a 20 year old child living in Finland, what the Hell do I know?

If you find yourself in this sort of position then suicide is never the only option. Never. Even when you are absolutely sure it is the only course of action open to you, you are wrong. Talk to people that will listen and can help. There are so many sites and phone lines, and email addresses out there that I could spend all day linking them on this blog but if you are in the UK charities like The Samaritans can help with whatever problem you could possibly have and the vast majority of countries have helplines dedicated to helping you. Talk to someone. Please don't be one of those 800,000 to one million people. Something will always be better than nothing.