Overheard Comment

The comment was this: We as a species, we can't be alone, we need to be with someone. Yet my life is at its essence an exemplar of being alone. Pick the age range and the circumstances fit: 6th grade hanging out with other kids who were, looking back on it, very dissimilar from me, although at that age it doesn't matter, high school, just coming home and watching TV, somehow ending up living by myself at college (an nearly impossible logistical outcome) and on and on it goes - until today, still alone, a job where I work ostensibly alone, an occasional abiding friendship, rarely a romantic interest, no deep family connections, no hobbies or pursuits that take me into groups, and anyway, always at the fringe of groups.

If you wanted to I suppose you could make some sort of profile out of this. I don't care. I'm tired of it. And when people get all bent up when I say I have a suicide blog -- bent up for what? It's either A. shunned by all of human society or B. unable to integrate into society or even a relationship -- take your pick it's irrelevant, but let's return, Bent up for what? Really no one cares, if I died it could be WEEKS before anyone discovered the body.

Tomorrow

I still can't say I've had a day of fun. In fact, on Friday, I had a day of unrequited misery. But for me, misery will never cause me to pull the plug. That is weakness. What is a little pain? Especially when others are there to share the misery.

Of course, when you are so busy, you don't bother to worry about how useless your life is. And for the last 10 days, I have been busy. Not lucrative busy, not overly productive busy, just task to task to task busy. With other people. No one who is vastly connected pulls the plug. Unless that entwinement is trumped by, say, a violation of principle so deep they feel they must make a statement (Vince Foster), that their purpose in life is gone because they can no longer produce (was that Hemingway?) or else they are making everyone hate them (Hunter S.)

No one who does not think about life will intentionally end theirs. Only the seers, the seekers, the limit-pushers pull the plug.

Tomorrow

I still can't say I've had a day of fun. In fact, on Friday, I had a day of unrequited misery. But for me, misery will never cause me to pull the plug. That is weakness. What is a little pain? Especially when others are there to share the misery.

Of course, when you are so busy, you don't bother to worry about how useless your life is. And for the last 10 days, I have been busy. Not lucrative busy, not overly productive busy, just task to task to task busy. With other people. No one who is vastly connected pulls the plug. Unless that entwinement is trumped by, say, a violation of principle so deep they feel they must make a statement (Vince Foster), that their purpose in life is gone because they can no longer produce (was that Hemingway?) or else they are making everyone hate them (Hunter S.)

No one who does not think about life will intentionally end theirs. Only the seers, the seekers, the limit-pushers pull the plug.

What was that Cheryl Crow song?

"never had a day of fun in his life"

that's me, for sure. Only now, when I see people having fun, when I step into an elevator of 7 smiling women, it just makes me sad, defeats me, that chemical release that comes with it over-runs me. Because I'll probably never have a day of fun. It would be quite irrational to expect that, given my past.

People say, look at yourself, you must be the problem. Thanks. That's a big help.

A Riff on Hunter S Thompson

These have been reported as Hunter S Thompson's last words:

"No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun—for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax—This won't hurt."

I was told by an inside source at ABC News that the last year or so had been especially difficult. In constant pain, Hunter became a constant bitch, an irritant, impossible to live with, a source of pain to all his friends. When you realize that you are making life miserable for those you love, that is incredibly heart-rending. Medical disabilities due to, well breaking down, are irreversible. Your own quality of life falls rapidly, especially for someone like Hunter who as Remy said "Had a place in society." His production waned, he was in a wheelchair, and no one could take being around him.

Often those who commit suicide are labeled weak. Or seen as insane. Myself, I look down on anyone who is responsible for other people, especially children, and commits suicide. How can you be so selfish? Your pain can't be that bad, trust me it is not as bad as someone like myself, more or less aloneabandoneded, and saddled with high expectations. But some people refuse to sacrifice for others. They spread then only pain. Hunter S Thompson cannot be accused of those failings. His life as he knew it was over. He was impinging now on the existence of others. But clearly his suicide is an archetypal suicide, one that, were the rest of us in his situation, we may be proud to have executed.

I Worked 17 Hours Yesterday - for Television

The mundane details perhaps are not so important as the cumulative effects, as important as the opportunity costs. So evocative, that second phrase. From the realm of opportunity, the constellation of the set of what you could have been doing. Those other jobs that forward the arc of the world. That pay compound interest on the quality of life.

Don't presume for one second I have succumbed to the idiocy, the numbness of banishing thoughts and dreams of what can be done, what needs to be done. So why am I not fully engaged in this direction. AND WHY DOES THE WORLD INSIST ON MAKING THIS (THESE NECESSITIES?) THE PATH OF GREATER RESISTANCE?

Never Buy All You Can Eat Sushi

Never buy all you can eat sushi. A mistake. Why? Because you sit there and watch everything being made in front of you. And you see all the nice rolls and cuts, and then see them whisked away to the others. Then you are served. Inferior cuts. Too much rice. A mistake.

How to you react to the mistake? Blame yourself, because you should have known better? Perhaps if this had been your second or third similar mistake. I remember blaming myself for making the same mistake twice, in circumstances where your mistake could easily be fatal. This is a horrible situation. You know you could have died, and have only yourself to blame. Do you blame the other party? For serving inferior goods, while trumpeting them? Do you tell the restaurant, like I did, that they should stop offering the "all you can eat?"

Or do you simply wonder how the world could come to this: where the inferior is tolerated? Perpetuated?

Decisions

I think there are 40 or 50 decisions that greatly influence and determine the outcome of your life. Of that decision set, I cannot think of one, not one, where I have made the correct decision.

Perception

You can be sitting there, and people can wander by, and you can be amazed at life, at variety, at potentiality. Or you can dwell instead on the lost opportunities you are now reminded of, of the friendships cut short, the passionate love affairs never started - a myriad of reason for both.

Life is clearly a balance sheet. When the ledger is so deep in the have not column, that is when you begin to question your existence. Be warned: do not tell people "how wonderful" their life is. You have no idea. What outwardly to you might seem pleasant enough, is the dark pit of hell to them.

People laugh when I tell them I have this blog, because what other reaction can they have? They are not at my station in life. And good for them, really. But what may be a smiling face to you is a stark reminder of an accumulation of failure on a scale you can't comprehend, while the sun shining becomes nothing but a triviality at best, or the mid-day sun of Phoenix.

Unanswerable Questions

In another conversation with Remy, he made the point that all of us have had at one point: why is the world directed the way it is? That is, on making money, on consumption, well modern american society. Good question. When I was his age it pissed me off. I would walk around Denver saying if I was in charge NONE of this would be here. Now I'm too old. I'm tolerant. However, I have a few answers.

First off, there is simply our form of life. We can see globally, that is we can see a world we would wish to live in. However, we are chained to the past, we have been born into a world already going. We cannot start from scratch. More to the point, please recall that our form of life CONSUMES OTHER LIFE TO SUSTAIN ITSELF. All life on this planet EATS OTHER LIFE TO KEEP LIVING. I myself consider this a woeful design flaw. We have been built to kill, to eat, to survive. You can meditate on the ramifacations of this. They are huge.

Two, there are different stages of development in the world - socially, economically, institutionally. This is a gap that must be bridged.

Third. Let's be clear, right now, we don't have the capicity to support all 6.5 billion people (up from 2.8 just 50 years ago!) at the consumption levels of the USA and Western Europe.

Fourth. This is what would have to happen to flatten out the income curve, the lifestyle (ie health and nutrition, shelter, culture, and war) curve -- massive redistribution of income, and even less likely LEADERSHIP FROM OUR INSTITUTIONS, coupled with the even less likely in the short term REGIMES IN POWER THAT ACTUALLY WISH TO HELP THEIR CITIZENS EFFECT THIS CHANGE.

Remy and myself would gladly join the war. It just needs to be happening on a much grander scale than it is now.
You can blame both of us for not sacrificing it all to make it happen. Fair enough.

Just as, fair enough, the inability of all our predecessors to even remotely tangle with the problem - can you point to a violence free nano-second in the last 10,000 years? - is enough to demoralize anyone to the point where they ask: what is the point of being involved with this mess?

Don't Yell at Me

A few of my friends are a bit peeved that I have a suicide watch blog. But of course, they are all younger than me, more successful at being connected. Or perhaps they entered this world with more realistic expectations. Or should I say lower expectations.

At what point to we have to say: my life really isn't of that much value? There are 6.6 billion people on this earth. None but the most optimistic see this as a sustainable situation. Western philosophy has at it's root the primacy of each individual, but is this really for the better?

Perhaps many see this blog as a countdown to my carbon monoxide party. Rather it is simply this: a good portion of the population ponder whether they should exist daily. And for a larger chunk than one would imagine, the links to living in current time not that strong.

Yet Another Article of Note

Click on the headline for this very good article in the New York Times. Severely depressed patients, many of them suicidal, can be successfully treated by pinpoint brain stimulation. This points to, again, the biological basis for many depressions and for many suicides, especially later life suicides. Any why not? Intuitively this makes tremendous sense.

When I was growing up our teachers would tell us that as a species we were built for about 40 years. Only in the last few thousand years has the population ever reached such extended life durations. The human body is complex beyond belief, and we know that for every advantage, there is a cost. For instance, a particular beetle grows a horn, and those with the longest horns are selected for reproductive success. But when researchers intervened to created even larger horns, well those beetles suffered from diminished brain size. Perhaps our trade-off has been longevity vs reliability. For our bodily systems to work reliably, the sacrifice turned out to be errors that showed up later: cancers. Brain malfunctions.

Everybody has a mid-life crisis. Why? What is it? Those questions are answered but stepping back and seeing the big picture. Once you hit 40, you just aren't as valuable as you used to be. And that's the way it is.

Suicide Clubs?

My friend Ian alerted me to this story on the web. Just click on my title and you can go there.

The story is about teens and suicides. Suicide clubs that start on the web. Now, this is temporally and categorically different than my middle age suicide. Teen suicide, not all of it but some, has an emulation aspect. Remember Columbine? Suddenly there is a spate of copy-cat shooting. Why? Teens seek inclusion, identity, their group. The extent of the connection, the intensity of the act, for some that is a compelling aspect. We all remember, or know, or now know, how intense life is as a teenager. Suicide, as an irrevocable act, is not a sufficient deterrent to inclusion in a club.

Now, that's not the only side. The despair side, the futility side, the I am an individual side (and hence oh so alone) - those are the common aspects of teen suicide. But there was a wonderful Oliver Sacks article about copycat suicides in southeast Asian - and so it exists, it is a common enough event.

Middle age suicide has nothing to do with inclusion. Just the opposite. The time for me, as a person, to be one with society is over. I will never be able to join, not in a meaningful way via work or children or a spouse. There is no promise. The thought of death doesn't even effect my heart rate.

Of course there are other factors involved here. Japan is a special society, the internet can bring together easily people who otherwise would have no contact. Our species has a death wish. Especially when you are young.

All Hope Is Not Lost

Last night sitting on the stoop of my building two gay crossed the street to see if I was interested. One's shirt even said "Wanna Cluck?" with a picture of a compromised chicken. Sure, they made the pretenses of conversation, but I knew what was up.

When the gays stop hitting on you, that's when you know you have no chance, not even if you pay.

Of course that was yesterday. Tomorrow's a different day. It would be foolish to think it will be better. Studies prove that pessimists can predict the future more accurately. And all I ever wanted was to be right.