Suicide is not the Solution!

Thinking of Suicide!
(Published in The Central Chronicle, Bhopal/Indore 13/01/2010
Weekend issue of Free Press, Jan.31,2010)

          It is said, “Man is the crown of creation,” which means that human beings are the best part of whole creation. We can measure the numerous heights, achieve great things and materialize our great dreams. Human beings have ‘reason’ that no other creatures have. We have memories and emotions; we have faculty of emotions that makes us the unique beings on the earth. However, all the capabilities and boundaries of human beings remain so far undiscovered. Nobody has so far set a limit that a man can do only so much. We have not yet learnt to use all the human faculties fully. Most part of the brain of an ordinary human being remains unused. We have powers that lie hidden and dormant within us.

          One of such wonderful faculties that we possess is our ability to re-live our past moments or live in advance the moments yet to come. We can feel the joy and feelings of same happiness as we had when there were moments of joy in our life but absent at present. We can re-collect all the joys and gladness and give ourselves an experience of same joy and happiness even when it is only a memory. We can also feel the joy of some incident yet to occur, just by mere imagination of such event. Such wonderful is our ability. On whatever we focus, that determines our inner state.

         It is also true with our negative feelings and emotions. We can experience constant pain, sorrow, and disturbance by just remembering our moments of trouble and agony. We can undergo pain and agony of something that hasn’t yet occurred. Inferiority complex is one example of such thinking and imagining in advance.

         In spite of being so superior and unique, there are times in one’s life that one forgets all the uniqueness that one possesses and situations force one to make a choice that should never ever be made in any circumstances. Due to momentary tension and depression, misunderstanding, failure, infidelity on the part of our loved ones etc. one decides to put an end to such beautiful human life. Alternatively, putting in other words, sometimes a person may become blind by some temporary forces that s/he decides to commit suicide. Very often, they do not realize the gravity of the choice they make. It is illegal and morally wrong. It is unacceptable.

             There is no human being in the world that has no problem at all. The only people who have total peace and serenity are the ones who lie in the tombs. Only because they have no life. At this point one may be reminded of the story of a woman who wanted her dead son to live and she was asked by Lord Buddha to fetch some grains from a house where there was no sorrow at all. The woman failed. The story teaches that pain and suffering, joys and happiness are but indivisible part of human life. At the same time, it fully depends on us as to how we choose to react to these. They are not above life; not even equally valuable to life. The life is much valuable than these few bundles of emotions and feelings. To get rid of our negative feelings we cannot trade with our life.

          On the contrary, one should remember that we are not machines or robots that we choose our emotions and reactions. When we are depressed, we calculate and choose the button to react. We are human beings and sometimes vulnerable to these emotions. One should never forget that it is very difficult sometimes to withstand the failures, the tension, the pain of the betrayal of the one whom we trusted most and had been faithful all the life. It is very difficult to live on when one is misunderstood by very own loved ones, when in spite of so much hard work and effort one meets with failure. Such moments make one to think that the very purpose of life is lost, it is of no use to make the life miserable simply and drag on, so why not to finish everything and retire to eternal rest, end the life itself. This is what a defeated person, who sees suicide as the best way to get rid of all troubles, thinks. Ending one’s life seems the best solution available to solve the toughest problems of life. However, such person, before committing the heinous act, must give a little thought to the following things:

• Before ending the life, just remember and recollect as from where you got this life? Is this life the result of the efforts of yours alone?

• Take such step only when you are 100 pc sure that there is nobody in the world who has no more sorrow, pain and suffering than you; when you are sure that you are the most unfortunate person in the whole world.

• Remember the persons whom you love most and just recollect the happiest moments spent with those persons. Also, remember the persons who love you most.

• Just give a little thought to the sincere smile of your parents who have brought you up from the very moment of your birth, even before birth. Remember the sacrifices they made to make you able and educating you.

• Remember some of the people who attempted to commit suicide but could not succeed and what happened afterwards?

• Even you decide to end your life, just imagine the pain your body will have when it has to part with life untimely and unnaturally. The pain your lungs will undergo when they are deprived of oxygen, the pain your neck will have when it is broken in case you hang yourself.

• If you shoot yourself or destroy by some other means, just imagine how much blood will be spilled all around, who will like to clean that blood? Would you like your body of which you took care so well, lies uncovered before the public?

• Remember the people who are related with you. How much agony and mental torture they will undergo when they are asked hundreds of questions by the police and various people after the suicide?

• Would you like people talk hundreds of things about you, which are not true, and you cannot prove them wrong because you will be dead and gone.

• Above all remember the fact that if you channelize your grief and give a different direction to your life, you can make the world a little more beautiful place to live. You feel your life is of no use to you, than can it be of no use to others? There are people who changed their life for others and did wonders.

• Can you use your life for the good of others?

• Remember that there is always somebody who loves you, who needs you; you just need to discover that person.

          Human life is most valuable and most unique, it’s free gift of God and we have no right in any case to reject this gratuitous gift. Nobody can presume that by taking such step like suicide, one can please others, or God or even him/herself. Ending life is not the solution to problems but facing them courageously certainly is.

                                                                             

                                                                   - B. Johnson Maria