Despair and Suicides

Despair

The news lately has not been good. Our world has been going through some tough times. We go through these recessions periodically, once every ten to thirteen years. These are sporadic occurrences, they happen in a free society. We must learn to prepare for the tough times. My mother always told me to save for a rainy day. Well, it is raining now and I forgot to save. I forgot the Boy Scout motto. "Be prepared."

I am lucky though. My wife and I have decent jobs. My sister, though, has been living and working the past few months under the threat of layoffs. Her husband works a seasonal industry and his field has been hit by the recession. I understand their worries. I hear things. My sister is a teacher. She works hard for ten months and then has two months off without a paycheck. It takes good planning to make it through the summer like that. I think that mindset is helping her through these times.

I remember the old fable about the ant and the grasshopper. The grasshopper spends his time hopping and dancing around while the ant spends his time storing food for the hard times. Winter arrives and the grasshopper is left without food and starves, while the ant is well prepared. (reference Aesop’s Fables or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ant_and_the_Grasshopper.

I have been here on this earth for 50 years. I have lived through several recessions. The trick is how we handle them. These are tough times. You cut back, tighten the belt and persevere until things get better. Use the industrious ant as an example and save for that rainy day. If we do that then we can be optimistic about our future.

But there is a more serious side to this and what strikes me is the depths of despair. So many people just give up. Our president spoke a lot about gloom and despair. The threat of a depression, while certainly possible, I think was a remote possibility. Our fundamentals are good. Our political and economic systems are both very good. I think we suffered a lot from the fear from our media and our politicians.

Suicides

But we haven’t taken the wisest course. We hear, almost every day, how bad things are. How our companies are failing and our system is broken. (It works just fine. Step back and let it work.). I see the despair. Just watch the news. Something like 50 people have been killed in the last month in murder suicides where some one has just given up. It breaks my heart. That depth of despair. It is almost unfathomable. I cannot understand suicide, that loss of all hope. How can you just give it all up like that?

Every time I think about or hear about suicides I remember a news story from my youth. Four or five spoken lines on an evening television newscast about a teenager found hanged to death in the swamps of south Louisiana. This young man had so much despair that his note said that he had purposely destroyed any evidence that would lead the police to his identity. He just wanted to go. He did not want to be remembered. A life so painful and lonely, he just wanted to be forgotten. But I remember, 35 years later, I remember.

What jolted me back to this memory was a news story from this past week. "Skeleton Found in Tree 29 Years after Suicide". Mon. Apr 6, 1:50 pm ET BERLIN (Reuters)

"The skeleton of a German retiree who tied himself to the top of a tree and shot himself to death nearly 30 years ago has been found by a hiker. German police in the southern town of Landshut said on Monday the 69-year-old man disappeared in 1980 and had been classified as missing. An 18-year-old hiker discovered a bone in the forest last week and brought it to police. They searched the area and spotted the skeleton hanging about 11 meters up, near the top of the spruce tree. "After searching the area we found the skeleton up in the tree with the pistol hanging on a rope next to it," police spokesman Leonard Mayer said. Police were able to identify the man through DNA testing and an artificial hip. (Reporting by Franziska Scheven; Editing by Farah Master)"

Clearly, the depths of despair.

Be careful out there. Plan on the hard times. Prepare. Everyday is a new promise, a new gift. Share it with someone.
D.

Update: I linked to a Wikipedia article about "The Ant and The Grasshopper", but also, be sure to check out Somerset Maugham's "The Ant and The Grasshopper". It is a very humorous short story with a little twist on Aesop's old Fable. D.