They’re
still at it.
Far
be it from the likes of myself to question success, but my hat goes off to the
inventive entrepreneur.
For
twenty years or more, an outfit known as the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention has been soliciting for
and collecting some handsome funds from the public at large. It’s for an important and notably visceral
and emotionally charged cause.
It’s
a cause predicated upon something very intimate within any given self, often
one very misguided and irrational. And
sometimes, despite any ethical stance, one quite well thought out and very disturbingly
rational.
The
taking of one’s life is one of multi-faceted reason and decision. Irrational acts have certainly long been the
stuff of impassioned, and maybe at times substance-influenced youth or adults.
I don’t quite know if the leaders and officers of the American Foundation of
Suicide Prevention are capable of recognizing that these Bible-old behaviors
are not going to at any time soon be affected or re-directed by some
organizational movement akin in image to a population of wide-eyed young folks
all joined in hand on a sunny hilltop, chiming a musical hymn like a 1970
Coca-Cola ad with vocal backing by The New Seekers. But that apparently didn’t deter a batch of
suicide-affected young folks from banding together and forming a fund-raising
organization designed to, in some way, shape or form “get the word out there”,
and influence America at large to kick that dangerous suicidal impulse. You know, the one that comes on when the
girlfriend dumps you, or you decide at 3AM on a Saturday night when you can’t
fit into those party jeans that you’re just never gonna lose that 25 pounds, or
maybe you’re all of thirteen and perhaps much like Todd Solondz’ fatal hero
Dawn Weinerdog in the acclaimed 1996 film Welcome To The Dollhouse,
you’re arriving at the realization that you’ll never see any civil justice
against the unfair bullying that’s slowly murdering you every single day in
school, and the only logical move left would be to emerge dead at last. It’s only understandable that people close to
and bearing an affection for those they’ve lost under those circumstances may
not have been able to resolve their pain, but are nonetheless, in Howard Beale Network
fashion, just Mad as Hell, and are Not Gonna Take It Anymore.
That’s
certainly enough to build a trending foundation upon: Collective aggravation, and the determination
to see better. I wouldn’t mind a
crime-free New York and violence-free America myself, one where rents freeze
and all middle-agers can look forward to comfortable retirement unconditionally
after fifty years of getting up, going to work and getting emotionally abused
every single day of their lives.
Somehow
though, I don’t think there’s a grownup around who doesn’t recognize, at least
deniably, that the world doesn’t work that way. Almost any functioning human of
some wisdom-endowed age will maintain some regimen of solemn and daily prayer
in their lives, of some sort. It may not
change the world, but it certainly comforts the way the praying human sees it,
and for that human, that’s literally all that matters.
Prayer
might correct some of the surrounding wrongs we have to rationalize our way
through every single day, the way we didn’t really have to as children of vast
question and inquiry. But movement-intensive organizations of people likely
won’t affect that sort of change. If
you’re talking about something like New York’s Guardian Angels, who formed a
youth army to work in tandem with law enforcement more or less, about fifty
years ago, to combat crime in the subway, that’s an effective organized
movement. Citizens forming neighborhood
clean-up groups to tidy up parks are a worthy cause, too. What does an emotionally scarred body of
people do as a unit to eradicate suicide..?
Citizens
have faced arrest from time to time when their outward suicidal efforts have
threatened to harm or disturb the peace of others. But often, the more intent efforts will
involve perhaps a weapon or a drug-induced end on a very well-hidden, solitary
level. And there lies the eternal
question: would circumventing that
person’s act in the moment have cured their intention forever..?
Maybe
it would, and maybe that’s kind of the problem.
Because whether anyone wants to accept this or not, to take one’s life
may not in fact always be what might be termed ethically arguable.
There
are good people in some extremely, dangerously untenable situations in their
lives, that perhaps only monetary miracles could mitigate. Controversial author Barbara Ehrenreich in
her 2000 manifesto, Nickel and Dimed, outrightly admitted that perhaps a
1930s Great Depression wasn’t necessary for some U.S. residents in sheer
destitution today to simply end their struggle logically with their own bodily
final option. Not all are willing and
courageous enough to come to New York City and become full-time beggars and
subway platform residents.
Not
everyone will recall one of the greatest personal substance addiction dramas of
the 1900s, a TV production by David Wolper based on a Jack Weiner memoir,
brought to life with painful acuity by actor Dick Van Dyke in 1974, a film
called The Morning After. It’s
not a shining tale of redemption, but rather a realistic portrait of the
suggestive fatalism of alcohol addiction.
The 1986 TV-movie Vital Signs featured Ed Asner in yet another
realistic depiction of an aging and prominent surgeon, who succumbs to his
dangerous alcoholic battle, one that threatens his son’s life and medical
career, by ending his life, quietly and politely. His passing is met very tacitly at his
memorial by many.
The
take-out package here is that the act of suicide, while denounced by that holy
compass, The Bible, still remains a final option to many, and one that cannot
be morally or ethically shelved on any generally acceptable terms unifiably. Nonetheless, the movement is entirely understandable.
In keeping with perhaps the holiest system in our nation, Under God,
Invincible, to bring acceptability to the act of Self-Unaliving might actually
bring harm or loss to so many of our economic structures, like realtors who
need paying tenants. Hospitals who need
surviving patients. Prisons that need
prisoners to scale their federal and state funding, as well as juvenile
detention centers and courthouses that couldn’t function without a requisite
number of felons and offenders every day.
Are we really going to let the funeral directors walk off with the bulk
of economic gain..? Not by any moral
design, if we can help it.
And
thank goodness there’s an organization unafraid to step forward and help it,
repugnance be damned. They’re not going
to do anything militant about their resolve, like march down the boulevard all
day. Instead, they’ll walk. At night.
In group funded, logo-branded T-shirts to advertise their
contribution-based movement. But this
isn’t some coin-in-the-can thing. I
stepped in on one of these AFSP overnight walk recruitment things way back
when, in heightened curiosity. I
expected a few brochures and a pitch for maybe thirty bucks. You had to sign a contract to commit to
raising $1K personally, through ten $100.00 donations. I thanked the Amway-reminiscent hosts with
great awe, and resolved to help the suicide -affected in perhaps a similar,
less costlier way. I met up with a
friend who’d lost a life-taken loved one not long prior. She, myself and a friend of hers met up one
evening for a nighttime stroll together.
A few hours of talk, tears and laughs.
I sprung for the coffee. But we
all made it home by midnight. We had to
work the next day, and we understood.
That resolving suicide won’t happen by walking, T-shirt wearing and
raising or donating $1,000.00 to do so.
But by understanding, surviving, and living.
-Noah F.
No comments:
Post a Comment