I don't know anything
about Fyodor Dostoyevsky's writing but I do know a little about his past. When he
was young, Dostoyevsky was essentially like a lot of bored college kids
today and he ended up joining a radical, left-wing group that was
talking a bunch of smack about bringing down the Russian monarchy.
However, the government got wind of this and arrested them all. Most of
them expected to spend a few months in jail, since that was the typical
punishment for this kind of thing. However, the czar decided to make an
example of these men and sentenced them to death. None of them were told
of their punishment as they awaited some word on their fate until the
day the were brought out of jail for their execution.
Suddenly realizing that they were completely done for, the men said their goodbyes and waited for the firing squad to take them out. Then at the last minute a messenger came with a letter from the czar saying that he was commuting their sentence and they would instead serve four years of hard labor in Siberia and then be required to serve a stint in the military. Dostoyevsky was so relieved that he wasn't going to die and suddenly he realized how he had nearly lost everything, how he had been wasting his life and his time hanging out with a bunch of liberal hippies who didn't know a damn thing about what they were talking about. He was shipped off to Siberia to serve his time and while there he had no access to pen or paper to record his story ideas. So he wrote them. In his head. And memorized them. Later, after he had been released from hard labor and was serving in the military, he was giving permission to write and publish his first book. The rest is history.
So what does this have to do with me? Some people I've talked to on Twitter know about the depression I've been dealing with for nearly a year now. More than once it reached a point where I was seriously considering suicide. However, I sought help for this, started on a medication and things seemed to be going better. However, as the summer has worn on I found myself still being miserable, mostly due to my job. Then about a week ago I went into work and sat there, hating it as I always do. Then I considered getting up, climbing to the top of my building, and throwing myself off. A moment later I realized that if I was ever going to get better, I couldn't just take a pill and expect everything to be fixed. I had to fix my life as well.
I decided that would be my last day of work. I left after my shift was over, called off for the next day, and on Wednesday I called work to let them know I was leaving, turned in my security badge and my uniforms, and never looked back. It wasn't until the next day when I woke up and realized I wouldn't have to go back to that hellhole that I felt happy for the first time in awhile. At that point I realized just how much my work had been affecting my depressive state. Because I have family that depend on my for financial support and because I still have to eat like any normal person, walking out of a job without having something to fall back on can be a scary prospect. I have money tucked away, but anyone who's lost a job in the last few years knows how quickly all that can get eaten up. However, I knew that staying there would have much more dire consequences than leaving would. I've long said that there's always another job out there somewhere if you're willing to do the work. Just ask any Mexican.
In the past I always thought of suicide as the coward's way out. I felt like people who took their own lives were weak and that they just couldn't handle what life was throwing at them and that killing themselves was such a waste. When you stand on the other side of that line, your perspective changes drastically.
I don't want to talk about fighting with my demons, however. That might be a conversation for another time. I do, however, want to say that when you start thinking about suicide, death and dying, when you're thinking about it on a daily basis, your attitude towards life will drastically change, even if you later turn away from suicide. Most of us don't think about death. We don't like to think about it because it's terrifying. It scares us because we don't know what lies beyond. Despite what the world's many religions will say, none of them have hard evidence of what lies beyond the border between life and death. Is it Heaven? Hell? Reincarnation? Oblivion? We will only ever know when we are ready to take the walk through that door.
But thinking about suicide forces you to think about what's beyond that door. I'm an atheist but I've always said that just as a priest can't give me proof that God exists, I can't give him proof that He doesn't. Considering your own mortality day in and day out can change how you see things. It makes you think of what will happen when you're gone. What will your loved ones do? How will they react? Will people miss you? What will they say about you? All you have to do is attend a funeral and talk to the people there to know the answers. Ultimately, however, there is one constant in the universe that no one, no matter their station or wealth, can change.
Life moves on.
As hard as losing the people we love is, the world will keep spinning. The sun will rise tomorrow. People will wake up and though some of them may still be mourning for you, most will never even know you existed. No one is immune to this. For all the fanfare and ceremony we give to someone famous or important when they die, most of us don't sit and contemplate how much we miss Steve Jobs or Ronald Reagan or the last pope. We think about the people who have left us but we still have our own lives to live. We can't spend every day mourning those who are gone. Eventually we have to pick up our lives and keep going. That same thing will happen when we die. Those we've left behind will mourn and move on. Nothing will be changed by dying. Nothing will be changed by taking your own life. And we will die. That is an absolute certainty.
You. Are. Going. To. Die.
It took me a little time to wrap my head around this concept. It's not that I didn't think I was going to die but rather it was the idea that we don't think about that when we wake up every morning. Today, thousands of people will lose their lives in a variety of ways. Tomorrow, thousands more will die as well. By the end of the week, tens of thousands will be dead. And there's nothing anyone can do about it. Either through conflict or illness or accident, people are going to die sooner or later and that includes you.
I'm feeling better now that I've left my job. I don't want to hurt myself anymore and I don't feel the desperate need to end my own life to escape the pain of being me. However, I still think about death every day. I think about how I'm going to die and when I do I think about what the world will say about me if I do. I wonder what people would say if I had chosen to throw myself off the top of that building. Most of my coworkers would have sat joking about it in the lunch room. "Well, there's another slot for overtime." My family and friends would have been devastated. My death might have made a small news story on the back page if my employers couldn't keep it quiet.
When I think about what comes after death, what people will do and say, I realize that not much is going to happen at all. Because life moves on. So now I wake up every day and I think about death coming for me. I think that, tomorrow, that hooded bastard is going to be waiting for me around the next turn. I think he's going to swoop down while I'm driving the work or to a party. Hell, he might just tap me on the shoulder in the middle of the night to drag me out of bed. Death is always just a few steps away for all of us. There's nothing we can do about that. So keeping that it mind, I think it's important to think about the lives we have today and consider "What do I want people to say about me when I die?"
"Live like you were dying" or "Live like there's no tomorrow" are terrible cliche. Instead, we should wake up every day and, just for a few minutes, meditate on our death. Think about it coming for you. Think about what will happen if you die right in that moment. What will you regret? What will you wish you had done? What will you wish you had said? Don't be motivated by cute phrases that can be printed on a t-shirt. Instead, face the reality that your end is coming, you can't do anything about it, and you need to get as much done as you can before then. Because you don't know what's on the other side of the door but you know one day you'll have to go through it.
Suddenly realizing that they were completely done for, the men said their goodbyes and waited for the firing squad to take them out. Then at the last minute a messenger came with a letter from the czar saying that he was commuting their sentence and they would instead serve four years of hard labor in Siberia and then be required to serve a stint in the military. Dostoyevsky was so relieved that he wasn't going to die and suddenly he realized how he had nearly lost everything, how he had been wasting his life and his time hanging out with a bunch of liberal hippies who didn't know a damn thing about what they were talking about. He was shipped off to Siberia to serve his time and while there he had no access to pen or paper to record his story ideas. So he wrote them. In his head. And memorized them. Later, after he had been released from hard labor and was serving in the military, he was giving permission to write and publish his first book. The rest is history.
So what does this have to do with me? Some people I've talked to on Twitter know about the depression I've been dealing with for nearly a year now. More than once it reached a point where I was seriously considering suicide. However, I sought help for this, started on a medication and things seemed to be going better. However, as the summer has worn on I found myself still being miserable, mostly due to my job. Then about a week ago I went into work and sat there, hating it as I always do. Then I considered getting up, climbing to the top of my building, and throwing myself off. A moment later I realized that if I was ever going to get better, I couldn't just take a pill and expect everything to be fixed. I had to fix my life as well.
I decided that would be my last day of work. I left after my shift was over, called off for the next day, and on Wednesday I called work to let them know I was leaving, turned in my security badge and my uniforms, and never looked back. It wasn't until the next day when I woke up and realized I wouldn't have to go back to that hellhole that I felt happy for the first time in awhile. At that point I realized just how much my work had been affecting my depressive state. Because I have family that depend on my for financial support and because I still have to eat like any normal person, walking out of a job without having something to fall back on can be a scary prospect. I have money tucked away, but anyone who's lost a job in the last few years knows how quickly all that can get eaten up. However, I knew that staying there would have much more dire consequences than leaving would. I've long said that there's always another job out there somewhere if you're willing to do the work. Just ask any Mexican.
In the past I always thought of suicide as the coward's way out. I felt like people who took their own lives were weak and that they just couldn't handle what life was throwing at them and that killing themselves was such a waste. When you stand on the other side of that line, your perspective changes drastically.
I don't want to talk about fighting with my demons, however. That might be a conversation for another time. I do, however, want to say that when you start thinking about suicide, death and dying, when you're thinking about it on a daily basis, your attitude towards life will drastically change, even if you later turn away from suicide. Most of us don't think about death. We don't like to think about it because it's terrifying. It scares us because we don't know what lies beyond. Despite what the world's many religions will say, none of them have hard evidence of what lies beyond the border between life and death. Is it Heaven? Hell? Reincarnation? Oblivion? We will only ever know when we are ready to take the walk through that door.
But thinking about suicide forces you to think about what's beyond that door. I'm an atheist but I've always said that just as a priest can't give me proof that God exists, I can't give him proof that He doesn't. Considering your own mortality day in and day out can change how you see things. It makes you think of what will happen when you're gone. What will your loved ones do? How will they react? Will people miss you? What will they say about you? All you have to do is attend a funeral and talk to the people there to know the answers. Ultimately, however, there is one constant in the universe that no one, no matter their station or wealth, can change.
Life moves on.
As hard as losing the people we love is, the world will keep spinning. The sun will rise tomorrow. People will wake up and though some of them may still be mourning for you, most will never even know you existed. No one is immune to this. For all the fanfare and ceremony we give to someone famous or important when they die, most of us don't sit and contemplate how much we miss Steve Jobs or Ronald Reagan or the last pope. We think about the people who have left us but we still have our own lives to live. We can't spend every day mourning those who are gone. Eventually we have to pick up our lives and keep going. That same thing will happen when we die. Those we've left behind will mourn and move on. Nothing will be changed by dying. Nothing will be changed by taking your own life. And we will die. That is an absolute certainty.
You. Are. Going. To. Die.
It took me a little time to wrap my head around this concept. It's not that I didn't think I was going to die but rather it was the idea that we don't think about that when we wake up every morning. Today, thousands of people will lose their lives in a variety of ways. Tomorrow, thousands more will die as well. By the end of the week, tens of thousands will be dead. And there's nothing anyone can do about it. Either through conflict or illness or accident, people are going to die sooner or later and that includes you.
I'm feeling better now that I've left my job. I don't want to hurt myself anymore and I don't feel the desperate need to end my own life to escape the pain of being me. However, I still think about death every day. I think about how I'm going to die and when I do I think about what the world will say about me if I do. I wonder what people would say if I had chosen to throw myself off the top of that building. Most of my coworkers would have sat joking about it in the lunch room. "Well, there's another slot for overtime." My family and friends would have been devastated. My death might have made a small news story on the back page if my employers couldn't keep it quiet.
When I think about what comes after death, what people will do and say, I realize that not much is going to happen at all. Because life moves on. So now I wake up every day and I think about death coming for me. I think that, tomorrow, that hooded bastard is going to be waiting for me around the next turn. I think he's going to swoop down while I'm driving the work or to a party. Hell, he might just tap me on the shoulder in the middle of the night to drag me out of bed. Death is always just a few steps away for all of us. There's nothing we can do about that. So keeping that it mind, I think it's important to think about the lives we have today and consider "What do I want people to say about me when I die?"
"Live like you were dying" or "Live like there's no tomorrow" are terrible cliche. Instead, we should wake up every day and, just for a few minutes, meditate on our death. Think about it coming for you. Think about what will happen if you die right in that moment. What will you regret? What will you wish you had done? What will you wish you had said? Don't be motivated by cute phrases that can be printed on a t-shirt. Instead, face the reality that your end is coming, you can't do anything about it, and you need to get as much done as you can before then. Because you don't know what's on the other side of the door but you know one day you'll have to go through it.
