Depression

Keep Hanging On And Things Will Change

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Suicide is, at bottom, a strategy to change an unwanted situation that feels unchangeable. It was Rollo May who said “Depression is the inability to construct a future.” In severe cases of depression there is no future, just intolerable, interminable present, a hopelessness stemming from the belief that things will be this way forever. In this context we see that the act of suicide is a way to take matters into your own hands, to escape from this intolerable, interminable present by blotting it out once and for all.

It’s an extreme solution for an extreme problem, a problem that exists because of the failure to recognize that nothing in existence is interminable, that actually the only certainty in life is change. If you are feeling suicidal, keep hanging on and things will eventually change. There is actually nothing you can do to stop the changing of your circumstances, something that feels tragic when it happens to those who are happy with their lives but something that is a boon and a blessing for you if you’re not.

The decision to commit suicide is a decision for change, but it’s a tragic change because it’s a permanent change, a change that leaves no room for you to experience any of the nourishing and wonderful parts of life, parts that are waiting for you down the road if you just have the courage to keep holding on and the faith that they can and will appear. One way or another your situation is going to change, change is inevitable, and this is why you don’t need to resort to the extreme solution of suicide to effect this change. It’s going to happen anyway.

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