Tag: media

Posted on

Wanting to Die

kurtcobainperformance_638_0“No one wants to kill themselves. It’s simply a by-product of wanting to die.” ~Anonymous

I’ve long said that I have no idea what goes through the minds of people who commit suicide, but I think now that perhaps I do. It’s not much more than goes through the mind of anyone else who’s had a bad day, who’s had a series of bad days in a row, and who wants relief from them. It’s not much more than goes through the mind of anyone else who feels left out and misunderstood by others, who wants to be accepted by their peers, and who has been depressed for one reason or another. It’s not much more. The only difference is the end result.

The difference between wanting to die and actually attempting suicide can be as simple as one day where no one says hello, that tipping point that by itself seems small but that added onto the overwhelming list in the person’s mind becomes monumental.

Death is glamorized in today’s media too, what with the love of vampires, zombies, and various other undead creatures in books and movies, and the songs about dying early that seem way more prevalent these days than they used to be. When someone is already depressed and seeking ways out, seeing or listening to something that praises death can’t possibly be a good thing.

“And I swear that I don’t have a gun. No, I don’t have a gun. No, I don’t have a gun. No, I don’t have a gun.” ~Kurt Cobain

And having friends or a loving family doesn’t necessarily preclude someone from being a candidate for wanting to die either. How often have you been shocked by someone who has committed suicide because they seemed so outgoing, because they had so many friends, or because they had a loving family? No one knows what goes on behind closed doors, or behind the eyes of each individual, and who are we to judge someone’s happiness? Too many people are too good at pretense, which is so sad when that pretense does what it’s meant to do, namely lull others into thinking they’re okay. Continue reading “Wanting to Die”

Posted on

When the World Ends

The-End-Of-Seattle“We ate the food. We drank the wine. Everybody having a good time. Except you. You were still talking about the end of the world.” -U2

There are so many books these days focused on what might happen after the world as we know it ends, books like Divergent, The Hunger Games, Prodigy, Uglies, and Matched. And in these books inevitably some horrible thing happened, involving human greed and devastation, that brought about a mass change in the way people looked at and interacted with their world. There are many movies that mirror that dramatic change as well, films like After Earth, Oblivion, and 12 Monkeys. As a society we are obviously obsessed with what comes after life as we know it.

I’m intrigued, however, about why we seem to think the world will go through some type of apocalyptic war and need to be cleansed by something that turns horrendous itself. Perhaps it’s because we tend to go in cycles, with good times and bad times, but human nature always wins out regardless. Human nature is of course greedy and self-serving. I remember watching White House Down and thinking about the motivations for the characters to do what they were doing, holding people hostage, killing people indiscriminately as they were. Then it hit me that they were just looking out for number one, what regular people do every single day in real life.

That’s why so many of these characterizations and plots revolve around horrible things happening, because when individuals are self-serving, it leads to chaos, anarchy, and war. We fight little wars every day, as singular human beings, but larger wars escalate as well, and it’s easy to see how they could morph into world-wide catastrophes. I often wonder what would happen if every single person did one thing every day to help someone else, how much that would change anything. I honestly think it might. If we’re thinking of others instead of ourselves, we would make decisions to help the collective instead of the decisions we make that lead to dissension. Continue reading “When the World Ends”