A week ago, on Fat Tuesday, I first sat down to write these thoughts. It was the day to celebrate and eat cake and chocolate and wine. Bring out the feast before the fast! We celebrated on Saturday with a Gulf Coast themed nod to the season and spent the rest of the week eating the leftover gumbo and dips and chocolate pecan cake and Girl Scout cookies and layer bars and hip cakes and chocolate almonds and the three pound bag of Swedish Fish, a gift to the newly minted 16 year old. We had to empty the house of treats before we gave up sweets for forty days.
After all of the gluttony, I was ready to die to desires of the gut. I was ready for Ash Wednesday and the "Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return" homily. But recent reads and events have me remembering that the grave is nearer than I am comfortable with. I am not ready for death.
Death doesn't wait for readiness, though. A young mom in the community just died of a heart attack - a reminder that the measure of our lives may be shorter than we expect. Although I didn't know her, I had several friends who did or who had children who were friends with her young daughter. My own daughter went to the memorial service with a friend and now can't stop talking about how the daughter's screams at witnessing her mother's death are what brought the neighbors over to see what was happening. Her death made it clear how connected she was in the community, and how many people cared about her and her family. It also reminded me to ask as Lent continues, that although I may resemble an end-times hedonist during Mardi Gras season, do I really live as if my last day is tomorrow?
Then my mother-in-law told me about the death of the OKC Thunder's coach's wife, who happened to be a track teammate from college, although she was a couple years older than me. I didn't know her, but I looked up her
obituary after my mother-in-law called to tell me about it and to ask if I remembered her. She and her husband started dating in college. He was a basketball player with a heart condition. She encouraged him to find Christ. They married, he got into coaching, they wrote a book together. She also was a mother of five children. Three of her children were with her in the car crash that took her life. They survived. This article makes it seem more tragic that her life was cut short: http://www.nola.com/hornets/index.ssf/2010/06/monty_williams_feature.html
Death by disease or accident is tragic, but death by suicide is even more so. T
his article about teen suicide from the
Atlantic Monthly, (linked in a
n article in America Magazine, which was linked in a post at T
he Catholic Catalog) emphasizes how devastating and pervasive it is becoming. Why are so many teens ready to die? From the December issue. this article by Hannah Roisin (who also wrote about the benefits of free play) is about the high rate of suicide in Palo Alto, the wealthy suburb near Google headquarters and Stanford. It's also home to a priest friend, whom we visited last year, at the Jesuit retirement home, which happens to be next door to a winery, which used to belong to the Jesuits when they also had a seminary there.
The young priests no longer live there. The old priests go there to die. And, as the
America article points out, faith is dying in these young people from highly successful, highly driven families. And the children are dying. They don't have any hope for a better future. They don't have faith that things will change. They evidently don't feel loved or capable of loving someone else. They don't have time or the inclination or the example of listening for God in silence. They don't experience wonder and joy in creation. They are weighed down by the pressures to succeed in their "work" of excelling -- and, I wouldn't hesitate to guess, although the study doesn't seem to take this into account, their devices. Other
reports have covered the increase in suicides related to s
ocial media a
buse among teens. (Other
studies see mixed connections.)
What is going through someone's mind when they decide to take their life? My older daughter's friend saw, and described to my daughter, someone jump from the bridge last week. She was in the car with her dad and saw a car stopped on the side of the road. Her father told her not to look, but she turned around to see a man falling through the sky, an image burned on her heart. Did he experience a moment of joy while flying? Or regret?
Two families we know lost sons to suicide not long ago. And I will never forget a friend from our days in Chicagoland who killed herself leaving behind 10 kids, a mix of biological and adopted kids, after one of her sons committed suicide as a 16 year old. In her suicide note, she said she had failed as a mother because she had failed him and wanted to be in Hell with him. I had nightmares for months afterwards and was hypersensitive to any negativity from my preteens.
At the same time, I have been reading on the recommendation of a friend who lost an infant daughter Viktor Frankl's
Man's Search for Meaning. This book sat on my parents' shelf when I was growing up. It looked like a self-help book to me, and I was never interested in reading it, but my friend put her copy in my hands. It is underlined thoroughly - almost every page - and I can understand why. It is the moving memoir of a Holocaust survivor who found purpose for living and, as a therapist, was able to articulate to others why and how seeking meaning allows people to endure tragedy, unthinkable suffering, and also - by extension - the existential boredom of contemporary society. (thinking of
this article from
Books and Culture, A Christian Review about David Foster Wallace, whom I AGAIN tried to read and returned to the library before reading this piece which makes me interested, maybe, in trying again someday.)
But the book is much more than a self-help book, even though it is one, among other things. It is a memoir of surviving the concentration camps, ennobled by suffering with dignity, which is a reason for living. He also wrote an explanation of a philosophy that every life has dignity and purpose and meaning and responsibilities, despite suffering, limitations, or loss, and a description of a therapy (logotherapy) based on the philosophy that everyone seeks meaning and purpose for life, and that meaning exists. Although it is not a work of theology, it is consistent with and supports a life a faith.
I want to press this book into the hands of everyone who thinks his life should be over. I wish the message of this book could be given to the man who jumped from the bridge. And to my friend who overdosed. And her son. And those teens in Palo Alto. And David Foster Wallace. And all the other poor lost souls who can't find a reason to live.
I know reading a book is not a cure for clinical depression. In the midst of darkness, a person on the brink of suicide is not going to be pulled back from the bridge's edge by reading this little paperback, but maybe it would encourage someone who is suffering to look into a different kind of therapy, or it might encourage someone who knows someone who is suffering to reach out.
Frankl survived the darkness and deprivation of the Holocaust because he believed his life had meaning, even though he had lost everything and was suffering excruciatingly. At one time he found meaning in his work and writing. When he lost his writing, he found meaning in wanting to rewrite his book. When he had no energy to think of rewriting, he found a reason to live by contemplating his wife and his love for her. As he thinks of his wife's image during a cold hard march
he realizes "The truth -- that love is the ultimate and the highest goal
to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that
human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart:
The salvation of man is through love and in love." He begins to understand the phrase, "'The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite
glory' ... in a position of utter desolation, when
man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may
consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way -- an honorable way -- in
such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries
of his beloved, achieve fulfillment."
And in addition to finding meaning in loving another person, he was given strength to persevere by living the Shema, the prayer that begins "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One," and which goes on to exhort the people to love the Lord and their neighbor, and to live these words and teach them to their children.
Frankl writes in the introduction, "Life holds a potential meaning under any conditions, even the most miserable ones. ... success, like happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself." In other words, the more we seek success, or seek happiness as an end unto itself, the harder it is to attain those goods. Naturally, as a person of faith, these concepts seem obvious. But do those privileged kids in Palo Alto (or here) understand that?
Finding meaning requires looking outside the self, a contrast to the advice of many contemporary gurus. Happiness can't be sought - it eludes the seeker more. Suffering, of some sort, is condition of being human and thus unavoidable. But it is not meaningless, nor does it take away meaning - or negate happiness, and can in fact add meaning: "... man's main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life. That is why man is even ready to suffer, on the condition, to be sure, that his suffering has a meaning."
Frankl quotes Edith Weisskopf-Joelson, a professor of psychology at the University of Georgia, on the topic of being unhappy - "our current mental-hygiene philosophy stresses the idea that people ought to be happy, that unhappiness is a symptom of maladjustment. Such a value system might be responsible for the fact that the burden of unavoidable unhappiness is increased by unhappiness about being unhappy.... logotherapy may help counteract certain unhealthy trends in the present-day culture of the United States, where the incurable sufferer is given very little opportunity to be proud of his suffering and to consider it ennobling rather than degrading." She wrote this in 1955. It sounds like something she could say today.
And advocates for abortion and euthanasia would do well to read Frankl's book as a clear defense of the sanctity of human life, and the inherent value of each person. He writes, "But today's society is characterized by achievement orientation, and consequently it adores people who are successful and happy and, in particular, it adores the young. It virtually ignores the value of all those who are otherwise, and in so doing blurs the decisive difference between being valuable in the sense of dignity and being valuable in the sense of usefulness. If one is not cognizant of this difference and holds that an individual's value stems only from his present usefulness, then, believe me, one owes it only to personal inconsistency not to plead for euthanasia along the lines of Hitler's program. That is to say, 'mercy' killing of all those who have lost their social usefulness, be it because of old age, incurable illness, mental deterioration, or whatever handicap they may suffer . . . Life's meaning is an unconditional one, at least potentially,.. Just as life remains potentially meaningful under any conditions, even those which are most miserable, so too does the value of each and every person stay with him or her, and it does so because it is based on the values that he or she has realized in the past, and is not contingent on the usefulness that he or she may or may not retain in the present."
There is so much I want to quote from this book to remember. I understand why my friend underlined so many passages. Perhaps the most important premise that Frankl wants his readers to remember is that all life has dignity and has meaning. That meaning can be found in creativity or work, in loving another, or in suffering with dignity - in other words, in accepting being. Meaning is found by receiving what life gives - in how we respond, in how we act with responsibility toward our conditions - not in imposing our will on life or finding something within. We must look to others, and to our attitude toward our condition, and change that when we can't change our condition (a remark I remember my mom making - and a necessary lesson for military families, for any family).
Having faith that human life is in the image of the Creator makes believing that all life has value easier. And Frankl makes a remark to this point to a patient: "Are you sure that the human world is a terminal point in the evolution of the cosmos? Is it not conceivable that there is still another dimension, a world beyond man's world; a world in which the question of an ultimate meaning of human suffering would find an answer?"
The Christian finds meaning in suffering when he lives Christ's command to love God and neighbor. In serving others, in creating beauty, in studying lives of people who lived with dignity and courage, in acknowledging and preserving memories of a good past, in seeing suffering as an opportunity to grow and to endure, in simply living the life he is given, man finds meaning. Faith, hope, and love follow. This really good
article in Maclean's summarizing a study on faith and teens makes clear that teens who have faith are less likely to suffer depression.
Someone needs to say to the man about to jump, to the teen about to overdose: you will be missed, you are needed, you have more life to come, to survive, to embrace. You exist. Continue. Life is the gift.
