Do you ever stop in the moment and take stock? Friends and family used to give this man self-help books for his birthday or Christmas. He never questioned why because he seemed puzzled about his life. He knew what he wanted to do with his life, but he needed to do something else first. By the time he finished what he needed to do, he didn’t have the energy or motivation to work on what he wanted. Maybe that self-help book had the answer to his problem. This wasn’t his first self-help rodeo. He needed an answer he could run with to put his universe in the order he imagined. He had plenty of energy to find the right path for his quest. There was a redundant pattern to self-help books. The author would start by telling him the extraordinary life he envisioned was within his grasp. It brought hope and happiness. Then came the part he needed to grasp to make it all happen. Every book had the same grasp ending.
This book had an interesting exercise. Take a piece of paper and draw lines to create four equal squares. Each square would have a title. These four titles were family, friends, work, and community. Imagine being in the back of the church at your funeral. Four people will come to the podium to fill in their version of each title on his piece of paper. What would he want these people to say? He put down the book. It was time to give his daughter a bath.
Twenty years had gone by. He was going through files from his past, looking for something he wouldn’t find. This trait he had was well known amongst his circle of friends. It is said humans spend two years of their lives looking for stuff. He always said he would have to add another year to look. He would always find something he wasn’t looking for. Today was that paper with the four squares describing what people would say about him at his funeral. He did get around to filling in those squares. How did he do on his quest…. test?
Self-reflection can be biased if not for a mirror. We are all 25 until the dreaded mirror gets in the way. So what did he find?
He moved around a lot all his life. He was a military brat. He started a new life every three years. It was a hard habit to break. For the first time, his mistakes didn’t go away with geography. It was easy to forget a lie or lousy decision when you would be gone before it boiled back up. It was like waiting until you were fifty to get your wisdom teeth, not pulled but cut out. It was pain made for a younger man. He had debts he may be too old to pay back and broken promises that were too late to repair.
His eulogy is yet to be written, and he’s not dead yet.
That is why suicide is painless.
To Be continued: