A Perspective On Suicide

I don’t think it is coincidence that while my husband, son and I were sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast a few weeks ago that the topic of suicide was raised. At the moment I cannot recall the context in which the topic emerged from in our conversation but my son, who is now a Senior in high school, explained that suicide made him angry. It made him mad to know that someone (especially if it was someone his own age) killed him or her self instead of changing things in their life so that they felt better. He didn’t understand why anyone would just rather die.  

While I was pleased to hear that my son had such a passionate view of life and was able to understand his own ability to manifest a life experience that he truly desired for himself, I was also grateful to have the opportunity that morning to share with him a different perspective that someone might have about life and 

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death – specifically death by suicide. You see, I acknowledged that there were alternative perspectives from the one that I now hold. I recognized the perspective that more than thirty thousand other individuals in our country shared, some of which were my own friends. I understood that sometimes death seems to be the only alternative to the pain and suffering of this physical experience. For myself, one of those darker times was during my Junior year of college and then another was after the birth of my daughter, who is now twelve years old. Those ‘dark nights of the soul’ brought me to the edge of hope for a life filled with less pain, less loneliness, less agony. My distress was so overwhelming that I contemplated suicide. At the time it seemed like the most logical means to an end. It was the ‘best’ way I could think of to completely end my overwhelming grief that I was experiencing at those times … day … after day … after day …

I asked my son to explain to me why he was mad at individuals who decide to kill themselves. Why did he take it so personally? An individual’s life isn’t about anyone else except that individual. While I agree, human beings are social animals and social animals clearly seek connection with others of their species in order to experience the sacred energy of God Herself, that connection, that relationship for us isn’t about the individual that we establish the relationship with. We may convince ourselves that it is. We may convince ourselves that the relationship is about the other person – but it’s not. It’s about your personal experience within that relationship. We experience our own unique perspective while we are involved in that relationship as well as any other experience we have while we are present on Earth. Our life is from an individual perspective. We live our life for ourselves because my life is about me, while your life is about you. My life isn’t about my spouse, my child, my parents, my siblings or my friends. My life is about me. I am the center of my life experience.

Death is the conclusion to that experience.

When the death experience has manifested in our lives it is because we have completed our human experience and are ready to move on to our next experience. Death in any of its manifestations isn’t ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – it just is and suicide is a death experience.

I believe that society judges those individuals who commit suicide with confusion. This is the perspective my son had. Why would anyone kill themself? We look at the condition of that person’s life and see the physical manifestations of desire that he or she surrounded themselves with and come to the conclusion that the individual must have been happy. He had a successful career, a beautiful house, an attentive spouse, flourishing children, and a lot of friends. Every time I saw and spoke to him he was smiling and appeared happy. What more could he want? What would it have taken to make him happy? 

Happiness doesn’t come from outside sources. Happiness doesn’t originate with a successful career, or the finest of possessions, nor does it depend on the relationships we cultivate with others. Happiness is birthed from within ourselves. Those of us who contemplate, as well as those who succeed in committing suicide, have lost their way in finding that personal connection to happiness. Their relationship with Self and ultimately God Herself is strained and thinned leaving the suicidal individual isolated and energetically drained, seeking a way to refresh that connection which is why death appears as a valid answer to their current condition.

While I empathize with the perspective a suicidal individual holds, I realize that I am helpless to truly change it. I cannot force someone to do something I would like them to do, and I cannot force someone not to do something they are determined to do, but what I can do is let them know I am available to aid with any guidance and support that they may need (and I am able to give them) while they navigate through their current challenging experience, and to let them know that I am someone who is able and willing to listen without judgment to their contemplations and considerations, and that I will continuously hold the vibration of love and compassion for them as they journey through their personal Shadows even if they are ones I myself have not experienced. I do not judge those who decide to end their life experience in whatever means they chose to do so. I understand that they have ultimate control over their life experience and would never disempower them by believing otherwise.

While I don’t claim to know all the answers to the myriad of questions regarding suicide, I do know this: judging, with anger and severity, individuals who have decided to leave this physical plane of existence by embracing suicide, does not originate from a vibrational place of love. That vibration is fear and fear does nothing to unify humankind, it only separates us.