Surprisingly, there are a large percentage of people who have thought about suicide in Canada, averaging, annually, about 20 males to 5 females per 100,000 of the population. The spectre of it, for me, rears its depressive head and arises only now and again – only lately, thankfully, in the hazy remembrances of those I come across through my work who have successfully carried it out. My only personal and direct experience was a friend of eighteen years of age. I was two years younger. I feel it my professional duty at this point in this writing to mention that medical assistance in dying (MAID) is not and should not be called “suicide," just as it isn't when we compassionately assist our devoted pets out of their suffering.
There is a verse in a Joe Jackson song entitled “The Verdict" that goes: “We don't know what happens when we die / We only know we die too soon / But we have to try or else our world becomes a waiting room." Profound sentiment. We have to try. I always wondered what that actually meant. Try what? Try to survive? Try to be happy? Try to make sense of it? I guess “try" means different things for different people. Did those who killed themselves, try? I recognize in that category, there could be a whole lot more attached to that outcome, than just trying.
What is quite apparent though, is that we, as human beings, definitely TRY to control stuff. Everything. ALL of the time. And the greatest thing we think we control is our fragile lives - in fact, it's because of the fact of our fragility that we then start to control our thoughts about how fragile it is and pretend that it isn't. If we could truly face the fragility of pretty much EVERYTHING in our lives, really look at the truth of our uncertainty, we would adapt ourselves to the way the world SHOULD actually work - in HARMONY with things, not in CONTROL of them.
Trying to control everything is often a sure way of becoming either very angry, very disappointed or utterly disillusioned. A recent event in my life truly brought that reality home. What I had desperately needed to learn was how to let go. In truth being able to “go with the flow" will cause you greater joy than any ability you have to control something or someone.
Another great quote I've come across in my life's practice is: “Don't just do something, sit there." Besides being a clever turn of a phrase; if you, like me, have actually done exactly that on occasion, you probably already realize that all of life is in whatever moment we WAKE to. The word “wake" meaning observing, being; not judging, thinking or controlling. One of the greatest gifts of taking the time for non-judgmental stillness is in the realization that we truly need to work WITH people and WITH the environment and not work AGAINST them in control.
Since early in our childhoods, we've been taught and we've learned that we can be masters over everything in our lives. That teaching is the groundwork for our own misery and our own destruction. This world was not meant to be controlled. It was meant to be respected. It was meant to provide sustainably. It was meant for us to be in harmony with. The necessity for control has given us war, genocide, famine, marginalization, loss of self-respect, loss of soul, worship of money, a blind belief in “progress" as being synonymous with “good", a withered and dying planet, and megalomania.
And in some cases, I'm sure, and more than likely...suicide - when we are rudely slapped in the face with things and situations that we realize are unequivocally out...of.......our............
THE VERDICT
