I have been feeling depressed for a year now. Not clinically, but enough to contemplate suicide as a way to escape. In fact, I think my application to Canada has always been a means for me to escape Lebanon. And I think if I don’t get accepted, then maybe I should kill myself to escape this life.
Things get worse with the routine. To work every day doing my job, coding is very routine and often stressful. Code doesn’t always work the first time you write it. And at 33, when I debug my code and it fails, I start thinking “Am I getting too old for this shit?”. Yet whenever contemplating suicide for more than a few minutes, I immediately realize that life is worth living.
First, for all we might know this is the only existence that we will ever have. Sure it has its down sides, but there are always up sides in life. For instance, I don’t have a girlfriend and can’t really name a single person as my friend, but I can find a lot of joy in watching movies, reading books or when my code works. There’s joy in introspection, thinking about the big questions out there. There is joy in education, online and on campus. I have a family that is very supportive of me. And ultimately I have a mind and an imagination that can take me anywhere.
Second, what if the afterlife is worse than this life? Some people think that if they end the pain of this life then they will be at peace. Well maybe, but there are equal odds that what’s waiting on the other side of the curtain of life is much worse. Why have people always feared death? Maybe they had a reason.
Thirdly, we are all going to die. Why rush things? It might be understandable for someone who is in incredible physical pain to want to end his life. But someone like me who is just lonely had no reason to. I never know, I might meet someone in the future. And if I don’t I have things that can keep me occupied while I wait for death. For instance, I have recently started working on a project that might lead me to my dream career. That is exciting and can be very fulfilling.
But ultimately, for every person who is unhappy in this life, there are 10 people who have it much worse than him but who are always smiling. My religious mother, always tells me about our local garbage man. He is a poor ugly fella, who came here from Egypt and survives on below minimum wage. Yet he is always happy. He calls himself the Pasha (which means the boss). Life gave him lemons but he managed to make lemonade out of it. And that’s the kind of view we should have of life. Life, any life is worth living…
Things get worse with the routine. To work every day doing my job, coding is very routine and often stressful. Code doesn’t always work the first time you write it. And at 33, when I debug my code and it fails, I start thinking “Am I getting too old for this shit?”. Yet whenever contemplating suicide for more than a few minutes, I immediately realize that life is worth living.
First, for all we might know this is the only existence that we will ever have. Sure it has its down sides, but there are always up sides in life. For instance, I don’t have a girlfriend and can’t really name a single person as my friend, but I can find a lot of joy in watching movies, reading books or when my code works. There’s joy in introspection, thinking about the big questions out there. There is joy in education, online and on campus. I have a family that is very supportive of me. And ultimately I have a mind and an imagination that can take me anywhere.
Second, what if the afterlife is worse than this life? Some people think that if they end the pain of this life then they will be at peace. Well maybe, but there are equal odds that what’s waiting on the other side of the curtain of life is much worse. Why have people always feared death? Maybe they had a reason.
Thirdly, we are all going to die. Why rush things? It might be understandable for someone who is in incredible physical pain to want to end his life. But someone like me who is just lonely had no reason to. I never know, I might meet someone in the future. And if I don’t I have things that can keep me occupied while I wait for death. For instance, I have recently started working on a project that might lead me to my dream career. That is exciting and can be very fulfilling.
But ultimately, for every person who is unhappy in this life, there are 10 people who have it much worse than him but who are always smiling. My religious mother, always tells me about our local garbage man. He is a poor ugly fella, who came here from Egypt and survives on below minimum wage. Yet he is always happy. He calls himself the Pasha (which means the boss). Life gave him lemons but he managed to make lemonade out of it. And that’s the kind of view we should have of life. Life, any life is worth living…
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