Tag Archives: compassion

When Is It Time to Leave the Party?

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“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.”  —Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar)

Freedom. Free will. Agency over our own journey. Personal preference. Knowing when to say when. 

Why are the fundamental, core decisions about how and when we choose to exit our experience on this planet restricted by laws, moral codes, religious beliefs, or societal pressure?

We never seem to shut up about liberty, independence, and the right to live as we choose. Yet, when the topic of dictating how and when we finally raise that white flag and throw our towel into the center of the ring arises, we are met with nothing but restrictions, moral shaming, and attempts at obstruction. Where’s the autonomy?

It doesn’t feel very tolerant or compassionate to prevent someone in pain from trying to end their agony. 

Medical vs mental. Is one more precious or protected? I have suffered debilitating effects from both sides of that coin. But differentiating physical torture endured during sleepless days and nights (feeling like your head will literally explode, locked in the vice-like grip of unabating pressure) from the runaway, insomniac thoughts leading you down abandoned psychological train tracks into some nightmarish wasteland of fabricated conjecture and endlessly cycling projection is nearly impossible when you’re in the grips of either scenario…and your body and mind can’t distinguish between the two varieties of distress.

Dr. Kevorkian was a goddamn saint…and even he faced unceasing ire and interminable scrutiny from a population (and legal system) unwilling to accept that sometimes people are at the very end of their frayed rope. They should not be forced to tolerate unyielding torment simply because archaic laws are chaining them to the walls of their pain. 

So what does that say about psychological or emotional duress? Since the misery we can clearly see is met with scrutiny and a reluctance to permit any justifiable attempts at cessation, there is an exponential level of resistance to suicide and someone’s personal choice to dismount the merry-go-round of heartache and trauma. For some reason, the deterioration of the body does not hold the same weight or importance as the degeneration of the mind.

So, when do we leave the party? If we want to close the chapter on our own terms, we need to be okay with the roadblocks, objections, and disapproval. This world doesn’t want to end our pain. It wants to control our actions. If there is no fear of what’s waiting on the other side, then there is no reason not to proceed.

When that pot of hurt finally boils over, and there’s no way to clean the mess, an Irish goodbye doesn’t seem like the worst exit strategy.

Adolescence Interrupted

Scales Without Balance

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“If we think of life as a kind of Olympic games, some of life’s crises are sprints. They require maximum emotional concentration for a short time. Then they are over, and life returns to normal. But other crises are distance events. They ask us to maintain our concentration over a much longer period of time, and that can be a lot harder.”                                                                                                    —Harold S. Kushner

I am deeply troubled these days. I’m blinded by unjust suffering on a global scale and I watch the escalating pain of family and friends from a very personal perspective.

How did our calibration fall so far out of balance? Why must genuinely sweet souls be forced to endure sustained agony while those with evil, black hearts are permitted to swim free in a sea of avarice and insensitivity?

I will never understand the fundamental human hardwiring that values greed and excess over common decency and the general welfare of others. It is a pandemic virus without a cure, and it’s systematically infecting our brains with frightening speed and alarming accuracy.

So…why do bad things happen to good people? Is there really no karmic system in place to level the playing field? Is everything simply randomized chaos without even the hint of some justified cause or effect?

This nightmarish scenario certainly frames society in a context that would cause the vast majority to squirm in their seats, and that’s not even taking into account the titanic religious implications in the lives of those who truly believe there is a grand master plan at play.

As hard as it might be to wrap your head around the fact that we’ll probably not get to the roots of the “meaning of life” debate during this short post, it’s worth considering that our own backyards are the only ones we can clean, and acts of kindness and generosity can easily be distributed one day (and to one person) at a time.

Your pain is never as severe as someone else’s. Your financial situation is never as dire. But your success is never as impressive, and your status is merely an illusion devised by your artificially-inflated ego.

Take a step back and take a step down. We are forgoing a sense of community and compassion at a disturbingly breakneck pace. It might be wise to take stock of what’s truly important…before it’s all lost.

Adolescence Interrupted