charlie wrote:Let people get away with whatever? Like suicide leads to some sort of prize or something? Maybe I'm exposing too many personal demons for the lurkers but unless you've seriously examined suicide as an option I don't think you can have an attitide like that.
i'm not saying anything about prizes and my response was more to highlight that ineffectiveness of saying you have to understand someone to judge their actions.
Look, my perspective is this. I like to think I've been around the block (with physical/spiritual/emotional trauma) as much as anyone with my very few years but I do not flatter myself in thinking I will keep the same perspective for the rest of my life. I also don't think I can pretend to offer criticism towards others who may have had tons more experience with pain/age/life than me. You fool yourself to think you understand any more than anyone else, especially concerning their very personal emotional and physical pain. Wisdom is something that only comes with experience and I'd hesitate to think I have a monopoly on it, especially when it's someone's else's life we're talking about.
i never claimed that i have a monopoly on understanding or wisdom. and i'm specifically saying that i don't understand those people, especially their emotional and physical pain. wisdom is something that comes only with experience.. if you commit suicide, where does that experience come from then? and it's not just experience, it's how you interpret and learn from that experience that matters.
It's clear that you have not been in the kind of place that might lead someone to off themselves.
you're making the same mistakes you accuse me of making.
That's crap. Life is tough all over and everything you do affects others. Bums you out I offed myself? Too fucking bad. Here's hoping it doesn't hurt you so bad that you get bummed enough to off yourself. Yeah, suicide could be a selfish action but noone's paying the rent on my body but me. Like it or not I'm not in the philanthropy business, especially when it requires me to sacrifice my sense of self.
you're exactly right, everything you do affects others. i'm just saying people need to recognize this. if they don't care about how we feel and what they take away from the world, why should they care whether or not we respect their actions?
Knowing a little bit about both physical and the "grey" kind of pain I can tell you that for me physical pain is easy. Emotional and spiritual pain is something no one can help you with. Often times these things all work together, but unless you've had an adult sized serving of them I don't think you can say shit about anyone else that has.
what's an adult sized serving? go back and listen to that npr.com link. that's a fifteen year old girl, raped for two weeks by who knows how many people. she'll go to her home, probably a one room dirt floor house, probably never know what being "full" is, never having clean water or vacinnations, never knowing what hope is or success, living with the diseases and possibly children that those men gave to her. and i'll bet you she lives every day of her life until her heart or body can no longer function.
how many times have all of us been there when the world weighed on us so heavily it felt as those we were buried at the center of the earth? and how many times have those times passed and we've soared higher than we could've have dreamed? "and this too shall pass away" is truer than any of us may know. it's rarely ever as bad as we imagine.. and, on the flip side, often times not as good as we dream.
Maybe you've seen much more than me and have untold amounts of wisdom in the short time you've had but I'm willing to bet there are still things about life out there for all of us to learn. My answers only work for me. So I reserve judgement on the kinds of answers others use for themselves, especially when it concerns deep matters of the soul.
i'm not judging how they feel but what they do. i completely respect and empathize with how they feel.. i don't know of many situations that when i wouldn't respect how a person feels.. but i don't always repsect what they do.