Suicide isn't just a mental health problem. It's a philosophical problem.

A couple of times in the history of this blog, I've had a reader reach out to me because they were concerned about me. Concerned, that is, as in they were afraid I was thinking of ending my life, of "dying by suicide," as we now say, because to say one "commits" suicide is to imply one has done something criminal. Criminals "commit" acts, we feel, whereas suicide is carried out by people with mental health issues. We want to distinguish sickness from evil. We are a more understanding people than we once were. 

My friends and other readers of this blog can be forgiven for their concern, although I wasn't really at any time seriously pondering suicide, at least not in an "I have a plan" way. I do talk about it every now and again, both on this blog and elsewhere. The reason it shows up on this blog is that writing is one of the reasons I have to go on living. It's not the only one, but it's an important one, and when I don't seem to be getting anywhere with writing, that removes one of the pillars of my "I want to live" building. This blog might be at times boring, self-indulgent, and unoriginal, but I've made a decision that at the very least it's going to be honest, as honest as I'm capable of being. That means not shirking from admitting that at times, setbacks of various sorts nudge me in the direction of thinking the struggle to find some meaning in it all isn't worth the effort. 

The most recent time a reader did a check-in on me was in September, after my "I don't think it's ever going to happen" post. It wasn't the only time, though. And this blog isn't the only occasion someone has had to wonder about me. In the Marine Corps, there was a suicide on base at one point, and everyone took the opportunity to talk to their charges about suicide. Most people assured their NCOs and officers that everything was fine and that they never considered suicide. I don't remember how the subject was presented to me, but at one point, someone said that anyone who even thought of suicide was weak. I gave the response that "I think about suicide every day." Unsurprisingly, I ended up in a counseling session with a bewildered second lieutenant who didn't know what to do with me. 

It's not as simple as saying "I'm thinking of killing myself"

Of course she was confounded by me. Given all the suicide awareness training the military has to do, she and everyone else was keenly aware that they were supposed to do something, but when she sat me down and talked to me more deeply, she wasn't sure what that something was. 

Lieutenant: I heard you said you think about suicide every day.

Sergeant Weber: That's true.

Lt: Are you thinking of killing yourself right now?

Sgt W: No, not particularly. I'm about to finally get out of the Marine Corps, so if there were ever a time I was going to, it probably wouldn't be now.

Lt: But you said you think about suicide every day.

Sgt W: That's true. 

Lt: But you're not thinking about it right now.

Sgt W: No, I am thinking of it right now.

Lt: But you just said you weren't thinking of killing yourself.

Sgt W: That's true. 

Lt: But how can both of those things be true?

Sgt W: I think about suicide every day. I think about whether life is worth living every day. I think about what reason I can give for why I don't end it all every day. I think about if it's possible life has any meaning, and if it doesn't why it's better to live than to die. But I don't specifically think actively about killing myself. Not every day, anyhow. And not today.

Suicide should be an acceptable topic of discussion 

That's the gist of what was said in that conversation, although I've made my part in it clearer than I'm sure I stated it then. There were probably also occasional "ma'ams" thrown in here and there on my part to show the required deference. 

The point I was trying to make is that it's possible to consider suicide in a philosophical way, one that includes me but isn't specifically about me, without necessarily being suicidal. I felt--and still feel--that one can consider suicide the way one considers a timeshare: Is this right for me? If not now, might it be right for me later? Anything else felt to me like an a priori judgment, and a priori judgments have never sat well with me. They tend to come--with exceptions--from people who are neither reflective nor thoughtful, the type of people whose opinions about religion and politics have not changed since late adolescence. 

My personal back-and-forth on the subject...it's pretty much Hamlet

Other than the seven years when I was an evangelical Christian, which provided an a priori reason not to "die by suicide," I've had something of of ongoing debate in my head about it. On the one hand, life seems to mostly consist, time-wise, of doing things I'd rather not be doing: work, maintenance of my belongings and my person, financial planning, paying bills, shopping, preparing food or cleaning up after having made it. It includes spending time and effort to master skills I have no interest in, like personal finance or how to spool a weed trimmer. Now that I'm older, that list includes visits to medical professionals. As I get older still, it's going to include a lot more of that. Life is mostly a shabby affair in which people scrabble to improve their lot by small degrees. We spend all of this time doing things we don't want to do in order to squeeze in the few things we actually enjoy, but in the end, life seems, by all the available evidence, to be a meaningless bother. Few of us achieve the dreams we want in life, and even if we do, we die anyway, and our achievements seldom survive a few years after we are gone. Given that, aren't most people making themselves suffer needlessly, all the while surviving on a thin, self-delusional hope?

On the other hand, though, the words of Gandalf often come to me when I start to think like this: "Despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt." Yes, life seems shabby and seedy and pointless, but do I know for sure that it is? And if I'm not sure, isn't it unwise to make a decision that can't be undone? Uncertainty as a reason to forego suicide, if not outright condemn it, isn't a new idea with me, of course. In the most famous words in the world on suicide (indeed, perhaps the most famous words in the world, period), Hamlet cited uncertainty as the thing that kept him enduring the thousand natural shocks the flesh is heir to:

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,

The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th'unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action.

Of course, it's one thing to decide not to kill yourself, and another entirely to endeavor to live happily and fully. "Life seems like a piece of shit, but there's a tiny sliver of a chance I'm wrong" might keep someone from ending their life, at least for a while, but it's hardly enough to make anyone bear fardels with a willing heart. It's not enough to inspire anyone to live selflessly or to strive for greatness or to do much except strive to maximize pleasure at all times. (This is what many Americans do, which leads me to believe that, whatever they may say, many Americans are, at heart, nihilists.) 

Yet, I do try to live a life of some value to others, or at least a life I judge has value. I don't call myself a nihilist, although my best guess is that either nobody is running the universe or the universe is run by a lunatic. So why do I bother to try? 

My best answer to this is something of a modified version of the point of Albert Camus' 1942 essay "The Myth of Sisyphus." I read this essay for the first time soon after I had stopped being a Christian. As one friend noted back then, even after I'd left Christianity, the Christians still had their hooks pretty deep into me, because I still sort of accepted their assertion that without God, nothing means anything. I'm still not sure I've ever abandoned this idea, but at least Camus' essay offered a third option, when considering the absurdity of the universe, between escaping it through belief in God and suicide. 

I don't exactly follow his ideal, but I drew this much out of it: I should live selflessly and nobly not because God wants me to, but because the universe is a cruel place that places people who long for nobility and kindness in a world inimical to these things, and so fuck you, universe. I act like life has meaning not because I am deluded enough to think it really does, but because I long for meaning, and so to act like what I do matters is a means of fulfilling my sense of anger that the universe isn't what I wish it were. I strive for connection and to help others precisely because the universe places me in an eternal conundrum of wishing for true connection and community while at the same time making those things impossible. I strive to act like what I do matters precisely because it doesn't, and that makes me angry. I love partly out of rage. I love and care and generally try at life as an act of defiance. 

A digression not strictly necessary

I know a lot of people who don't believe in any type of religion or fixed ideology, but who claim their happiness in life stems from something called "cheerful nihilism" or "optimistic nihilism" or something like that. You can find a lot of good essays or videos online by Googling cheerful nihilism, but here, I'll just say that the short version can be found in Monty Python's closing song from the movie Life of Brian, "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life." 

I know some people draw real consolation from the notion that if nothing means anything, that means we're as free to be happy as we are to be despondent, but this seems to me to be exactly the kind of "philosophy" Leonato spoke of in Much Ado About Nothing when he said there was "never yet philosopher that could bear the toothache patiently." Cheerful nihilism seems to belong to the wealthy western world, to people who generally are well fed, well liquored, and have enough hedonistic gratification to forget, temporarily, about the absurdity of existence. But actually crucify those same people, and not in the highly sanitized and comic way Life of Brian does, and see how long their nihilism remains cheerful.

Cheerful nihilism comes off to me as nothing more than the agnostic's version of Pascal's wager. In this case, instead of saying that you don't gain anything from not believing in God and might gain a lot from believing, it's saying that given the absence of God or some other ultimate meaning in the universe, you can either be happy about that or sad, and so you might as well be happy, because it doesn't help anything to be sad. I feel this has similar faults to the actual Pascal's wager argument. For the original argument, I've always felt that it doesn't matter if I can see that it's a good bargain to believe in God, because if I know I actually don't believe, then I can't make myself believe because I think it might make me feel better. Similarly, for cheerful nihilism, I can't force myself to adopt a sanguine attitude about the absurd just because it might make my time in the absurd less painful. 

In short, I don't follow cheerful nihilism, but angry nihilism, and part of that anger is to deny letting myself act like an actual nihilist. Of course, rage is only useful as long as you can keep yourself angry. The older I get, the more the fire goes out of me. It's not that I think the universe isn't a shitty deal as much as I ever did; it's just that I can't keep working myself into a fit as much as I used to. It ain't a perfect system, but it's the only system I've got. 

But my personal response to the problem of suicide isn't the point of this post

You can agree, disagree, or be indifferent to my own personal resolution of the suicide question. My point isn't that I have the right solution, but that suicide is actually a real question the absurdity of the universe places on each of us. That means that each of us has to deal with it like a real question, and if it's a real question, then it's possible the answer might be that suicide makes sense. If we enter the debate with an answer already in mind, we haven't thought about it honestly. 

If you listen to mental health professionals, though--and this is the real point of this post--to merely ask the question in an open way already means you have a problem. Because to health professionals, suicide is always the result of a mental health condition. They can't look at it any other way, because mental health care professionals enter the discussion with the strongest of a priori commitments. Their professional ethics require them to assume that suicide is always the wrong decision, no matter what the circumstances of the person in question may be. Furthermore, because suicide is always the wrong decision, it follows that only people with mental health conditions would opt for it. 

One can see this in the way suicide prevention training is carried out in large organizations. Many people--well meaning people, many of whom have been personally affected by the suicide of a loved on, and against whom I mean no disrespect--urge us to "look for the signs" and to always be checking on those around us. Whenever I read the proclamations of a suicide awareness campaign, I think about how such a campaign would have sounded like to ancient practitioners of seppuku. Or, for that matter, how it would have sounded to Shakespeare when he was writing one of his many, many meditations on the subject in different plays. You don't have to agree with how past societies have viewed suicide, but you do have to at least acknowledge that societal views on suicide have a long history, and that this history includes a lot of views that are far from our view that suicide is always a tragedy and always to be avoided at all costs. 

I don't have any problem with mental health professionals. Many people I know have used their services and felt themselves helped thereby. Some claim mental health services have saved their lives. I don't doubt that's true. However, I do think that on the subject of suicide, mental health professionals might tend to think they have the final and most authoritative word, when in fact, for someone like me, they might have nothing to say that's of any particular interest to me. To be helped by mental health services, one has to first buy into the notion that life is worth living. If you don't accept that, there's not much they can do for you, unless one counts putting chemicals in you that convince your brain you think life is worth living. Therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists can do a lot to help you cope with struggles in life, but as for believing that struggles in life are worth overcoming, they don't have anything to say, qua their profession, that's any more insightful or authoritative than anyone else. 

Because so many modern writers seem to have used therapy, the language of therapy has entered into the discourse on suicide and the absurd in literature, an intrusion I somewhat resent. For centuries, the central issue in English literature was man's striving with a universe that was either indifferent to or antithetical to human desires. The paradox of humanity both fearing and longing for death was everywhere. At least, in any literature I find worth reading. My views on this subject are influenced by Shakespeare, by Moby Dick, by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, by Milton's Paradise Lost, and by countless other works in which much of the external conflict is a result of an internal conflict against a fate or a creator that has let down its creation. Hell, if you read the Bible in a non-pious way, you'll quickly see that it's as full of humans complaining about their creator at least as much as they are praising him. 

This focus on humanity set adrift in a sea of the absurd peaked after World War Two, when it became impossible to ignore the fact that humans are without adult supervision, and that if allowed to, the strong will annihilate the weak. But the last twenty to thirty years have seen a turn away from this focus. It's almost as if, after acknowledging the unspeakable heart of darkness of the universe for so long, the human race has collectively given up and decided it's better not to worry about such matters. We haven't so much decided that the universe isn't absurd as we have decided to make a big joke out of the fact that it is. So life is pointless, big deal. Enjoy your streaming videos and your meal delivery service. Go to therapy and take drugs if you need to. It won't make the universe any different, but it'll change how you feel about it. The cultural artifacts of such are society are shows like Ted Lasso, which narrows the failings of the cosmic father down to the banal, forgivable weaknesses of the terrestrial father, and then tells us that a good enough therapist can fix that. Of course we don't say "commit" suicide anymore; our society isn't serious enough to commit to anything.  

To the extent there is still a struggle and a will to rebel in literature, it's mostly of a purely secular and political nature, not a cosmic and existential rebellion. The antidote to suicide isn't coming to hard-won terms with the absurd, it's a bigger social safety net to ensure mental health services for everyone. We rebel against the political opinion we disagree with, not the fate which presents politics with problems to solve in the first place. 

Thinking about suicide on my terms and making room for the terms others need

It may seem like I'm disparaging mental health services, but I'm not. Although I don't think the mental health profession can tell me why I ought to strive to work through the absurd, only give me practical tips to cope with its more obnoxious aspects, that's still a considerable contribution. More importantly, I do think that of the people who actually do die by suicide, the vast majority probably really suffer from some diagnosed or diagnosable mental health malady. As much as I am arguing here for space to weigh suicide as a neutral decision without automatically being lumped into mental health discussions, I doubt if many people argue themselves philosophically into killing themselves. Usually, there is actual suffering, rather than abstract suffering, involved in a suicide, and the worst of that suffering tends to happen between the ears, rather than elsewhere in the body. 

I was reminded of this recently when a friend sent me a couple of messages that sounded desperate. I was gone for the weekend when she sent them, which means I didn't see them until a few days after they'd been sent. (I keep social media off my phone.) The messages were urgent pleas for encouragement. This isn't a normal thing from her, and the fact that I hadn't answered her messages for a few days made me nervous. My friend has told me before about her mental health struggles, which are mild but still a thing. I regard it as a very special trust that she has shared this with me, but I felt like I had failed that trust by not being there when she asked for something. When I finally did respond, she didn't answer right away, which made me feel more worried. It wasn't just general concern, although there was plenty of that. There was also a specific feeling of responsibility. She occasionally reads this blog, and I'm sure at some point, we must have talked about my thoughts on suicide. What if my casual talk about suicide had had some influence on a person who didn't really need my influence? 

Later, I realized she was fine and that my concern about my influence on her was misplaced. My concern about influencing anyone is probably misplaced; that's one of the reasons I feel so dispirited about my progress as a writer. But in this case, my lack of influence was probably a good thing. 

Mental health professionals tend to get anxious whenever anyone except a mental health professional talks about suicide publicly. When there is a suicide in a school, they mobilize to stem the tide, because suicides can be contagious. When Robin Williams died by suicide, they scolded those who shared a "Be free, Genie" meme because it violated the standards for how we should talk about suicide. In general, there is a censorship of suicide like scarcely any topic. It might be easier to find pornography on the Internet than it is to find real information about suicide. I've been afraid to Google on it for years, because Google immediately freaks out and tries to get anyone who puts certain phrases in to call helplines and go to the hospital. 

To someone like me, who is fascinated by suicide and whether it's a good solution to the problem the absurdity of life presents us with, I've always found it interesting that we have to take such care to prevent copycat suicides. To me, that suggests that a lot of people are always thinking about it, although we are shushed and shamed when we speak those thoughts out loud, even more than for other subjects we are told to eschew in polite society. Which leads me to conclude that I'm right to suspect that suicide has always been a just-barely unspoken thought on the minds of most of humanity for as long as humans have been around. 

So how do I balance my responsibility to not trigger those with genuine mental health concerns with my own need to talk about suicide without judgment? While I may not be giving out practical advice on how to kill oneself, like one website parents are trying to get taken down, I should also consider my words as if my own son were reading them. (I've always been careful to avoid talking about suicide around my son, but I've noticed, as he gets further into his teen years, that he's a lot like me. I think he's going to get there quite on his own, and when he does, I hope he doesn't read the wrong thing or watch the wrong video before he has a chance to grow up a bit more and balance more ideas against each other.) 

There are two things I believe about suicide that mental health professionals would object to. First is that suicide is not automatic evidence of a mental health condition. Given that this is a world in which genocide can happen and no cosmic adult intervenes, I believe it is quite possible for a sane person to conclude that checking out is the best option. At the very least, it's not an insane choice. Secondly, I think that it's important to consider suicide as a real option without judgment, and that if and only if you do that, are you truly choosing to live. Early in Camus' essay, he posits that most people do not end their own lives because of a conscious choice, but the absence of one: "You continue making the gestures commanded by existence for many reasons, the first of which is habit." I believe it's important to truly choose to live, which means first to think about negating life. 

I might say that my own willingness to think so much about suicide might have saved me from it so far. One conclusion I've reached from thinking about it nearly every day is that it's something I can always put off until tomorrow. By procrastinating in this manner, I've managed to live until nearly fifty, long enough at least, that if I died tomorrow, it would be sad but by no means the greatest of tragedies. And I still have a number of reasons to go on for at least a while longer: a desire not to die before my parents, because as a parent, I know what that would feel like; a feeling that I have to continue to model perseverance and resilience to my children; the knowledge that I do not yet "see the end beyond all doubt." 

I don't know if I will continue to procrastinate forever, though. Maybe when I am very old and looking a nursing home in the eyes, facing a future of consuming more and more drugs and medical plastics and other consumables to stay alive without being able to contribute to society in return or even much enjoy the life I still have, I will finally decide the balance has shifted. Or, maybe, I'll find that I'm so terrified of death I want to run from it until I absolutely cannot run anymore. I don't know. I know I'm not made of tough enough stuff to perform something like seppuku. I can't take pain, which is one of the reasons I have not yet truly thought too seriously about suicide. All the options sound like they hurt a lot. So might as well keep putting it off, just like I will probably keep putting off the colonoscopy my health provider now wants me to go get. 

While I think it's important to confront humanity's innate and complex longing for death head-on, I think that at the very least, for the time being, I will avoid casual mentions of the subject when I write. A piece like this one where I am dealing with the subject in sufficient complexity is one thing, but brief and unexplained references are probably irresponsible. While I don't think therapists or psychiatrists really have the answers to the questions I pose any more than auto mechanics or insurance claims representatives do, all of these people can be very useful when you need one, and I have no desire to interfere with the practical help they are trying to provide. 

In closing, I want to make clear, if this post hasn't already done it, that this isn't a cry for help. I'm as close to happy right now as I get. It was a year of a lot of changes for me, changes that ended up being a lot more difficult than I anticipated, but I rode them out, and now maybe the worst is behind me. I probably won't ever find meaning through writing in the way I hoped for, but there are other avenues of meaning still open to me. This post isn't about me being at the end of my rope. It's about how I've tried for over thirty years to find a way to keep climbing.