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Originally Posted by MrNotebook  Awesome, I think today and for the rest of my life I will abandon all hope. Where do you get your amazing wisdom from? |
actually there is this guy, Steve Pavlina. Perhaps you have heard of him? He recently did a blog entry entitled "hopeless situations". Here's a sample:
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What makes a hopeless situation very stressful and worrisome is when you resist it. When you accept it and surrender to it, however, you get peace instead of stress. This is true even when the final result is death.
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Angela explains what I mean to an extent; ie that hope is like blame in that it it doesn't really line up with taking responsibility for ones life. In some ways it's worse in that it can be used as an excuse to stay mired in a situation one doesn't like. It also makes one outcome dependent which in most cases makes you a prisoner to things not within your control.
But I'd take it even further and ask why it's such a big deal if things really are in fact, hopeless? What if you are tied to the train tracks very tight and a train is coming at you fast? Sure you can wriggle your wrists around but your only true bet is to HOPE that you are seen by the train operator and that the train stops in time. This is very unlikely. But so what? The worst that's going to happen is that you are going to die. And what's so bad about that? Imagine how intense, how filled with life those final moments are going to be! You can pack a lifetimes worth of liveliness and experience into a few minutes! What a terrific opportunity! Which isn't to say you shouldn't try to escape, that's part of the fun! But you also shouldn't delude yourself. You're most likely going to die. And the quicker you come terms with that, the more enjoyable those final few moments are going to be.
Now imagine a suicidal person who feels so bad that even this fate (death) does not phase them. Imagine the freedom they must have! Were they to "hope" for things to get better, or something to intervene, then they lose that freedom. They are once again bound by the constraints that most people have. Where the current moment is mundane and the future is all that's worth living for. Which is hardly a healthy outlook on life, IMO. It's somewhat ironic but my bleakest moments, the moments that I really think I can throw myself of a 500 ft cliff, happen to also be the moments I feel most alive. I feel alive because I am being honest with myself, and I realize what an incredibly intense experience life is and then I wonder, "why throw all this away!?!". If only I could maintain that feeling of despair and channel it into my daily life! But like others so habitually do, I succumb to the deadness of hope.
at it's core, hope is social conditioning. Learned behavior that is out of touch and out of sync with our natural selves. The quicker you get rid of it the quicker you can find out who you really are and what you really want. That may or may not include joining the peace corps. And it may or may not include putting a bullet through your head. Do it or don't, but stop waiting for an external source to make a decision for you! Your life will pass you by!
on edit; I have to caution against using the peace corps as a way to fight suicidal tendencies. We're not talking about a self-fulfillment deal, it's work, hard work and it's a commitment. Additionally it brings many of the world's problems to the forefront of one's daily existence. Perhaps this would be a good thing for many, but it's not worth the rik. You do more harm than good by not following through on your commitments and in this case you harm others and not yourself. To resolve suicidal thoughts one needs to look within, not to a third world country.