Suicide
In news reports today:
On Wednesday, Alvarez parked his Jeep Cherokee on railroad tracks in Glendale as a commuter train approached shortly after 6 a.m., police said. Initially, Alvarez intended to commit suicide, police said, but he changed his mind. He exited his sport utility vehicle and watched as the Metrolink train hit it, derailed, ran into a northbound Metrolink commuter train and crashed into a parked Union Pacific train, police said.
What makes a person feel so low that the person not only wants to kill themselves, but take others with them? Have not all of us, at times in our lives, felt so blue that we thought the feelings would never end? It is known that some take the precarious steps, the precipitous steps, of ending the blue by killing themselves; ending the period of their lives that they deem unbearable by choosing what some would say is the easy way out: death by one's own hand. It is understandable that one would want to end the pain that they deem unbearable but all would hope other measures besides suicide would be utilized. Tomorrow always offers new opportunities. The morning always brings forth a new perspective. So why not wait it out? The pain can be surmounted and the journey in doing so can be dreadful, but the alternative to that journey, taking one's life, seems selfish. The work of life is not always joyful, but sometimes measured in pain. This triumph of dealing with life issues effects us all. and does so at the most inopportune time, but these and all triumphs are worth the effort. And we get through these times, hopefully, with grace. These ways of dealing with issues are easier said than done, but are do-able. And those days will pass, but can only happen with the patience of knowing that life's moments of abyss will dissolve into a new day and perhaps a brighter day.
What must the pain have been like to to propel someone to park an SUV on busy train tracks knowing of the ensuing tragedy that would befall the occupant and those of the undoubtedly coming trains? It is frightening to think about. Or perhaps that pain was not frightening, but the sufferer, not having or wanting to have the ability to deal with pain, thought it unbearable to live with, and took the measure of suicide and taking innocent victims with him? One can never mitigate another's pain as it is not their reality, but only the reality of the sufferer. But everyone has had days of despair and can find methods of coping and honing of abilities to help get through them. These methods and abilities come with practice and are not easily developed. One can only wonder if what happened recently is a sign of a person who didn't have, and most disturbingly, did not work at having and developing mechanisims to get him through the dark days? Peace and serenity are within us all inherently and the stresses of the outside world sometimes overcome what we are as individuals. The stresses make us on edge and irritable and we must fight to re-gain that composure that is within us. To let it, stress, implode within is unacceptable to society as a whole who inevitably, either indirectly or directly, become victimized by the implosion within an individual that results in/attempts suicide.
This recent tragedy exemplifies a person's inability to deal with the stresses of life adequately and the implosion of such. The ungracefullness with which this young man handled his problems has effected so many who were on a commute of their daily lives, and thus were in the midst of doing their work of life for that day. They got up in the morning and were at peace with whatever issues they may have had only to have someone else's issues impinge upon and change their lives. And now, another journey unfolds before them as the stress of dealing with the aftermath of a tragedy will weigh on them. Hopefully they will handle this stress it with grace.
15 Comments:
The same kind of thing happened here in England a few years back in a town called Selby with more devastating consequences. Attempted suicide by train, only the driver didn't die.
You have a good point about it being one thing to take your own life, but it's a different matter when you take other innocent lives with you.
Melinda, it never ceases to amaze me what people will do when they are depressed.
Thanks for commenting.
Most people who are depressed are hurtful to themselves.
Those that hurt other people, are pissed at the world and blame others for their shortcomings and depression.
This was a selfish person.
Someone who threatened to kill himself in front of his own child.
Someone who took 11 peoples lives, and was responsible for injuring over 100 more.
He needs to be on trial.
That's just my two cents.
As someone who commutes to work via a commuter train, this story really hit home. I always think of people who commit or attempt to commit suicide as extremely selfish people. Most of the time they have friends and family who are left devastated, wondering how they failed to save their loved one who took their life for some reason or another. The fact that this person decided to commit suicide in such a way that put so many more people at risk and then at the last minute decided that life was worth living only to have his selfish, despicable act end the lives of a dozen people and devastate so many more just leaves me in a state of horror.
It is stories like this where I wonder if perhaps I should abandon Agnosticism for any religion where a selfish person like this is doomed to spend eternity in hell, hades, or reincarnated as a toilet brush.
Chris
Your posting on such a difficult topic is both thoughtful and eloquent.
Thanks for that.
Bubba, 11 people are dead because of that foolish person. I am sympathetic to people who are suicidal because they need help but not when they take out eleven other people. Death is too good for that moron.
Sorry, but I don't think your simplistic life-affirming platitudes constitute much of a philosophy, and I personally find it kind of offensive. Life isn't simple.. the risk/pain to reward equation is complex and unique to each individual. God would have to pay me about a billion dollars to relive my life-- so if I wouldn't pay to relive it, why do you presume to know that, I should or MUST live the first time. I have tought about "offing" myself just about every day for 35 long unpleasant years. Tomorrow seldom brings a "new day" it just brings more of the same crap. Yes there is beauty in the world, Yes there are perfect moments of time, but also Yes life is a cheap addiction... want and need is always reoccurring. People are in fact life junkies.
As for your junk about selfishness, and cowardice that's just very cheap empty rhetoric. If I could just press a button and painlessly "delete" my presence among you plastic humanoids-- I would do so without hesitation. What would I be sacrificing-- scoring just another food and sex fix? Maybe that's good enough for you ...but it's not good enough for me. I have not created any obligations/children and I don't owe you, or anyone else, anything more than to fulfil the responsibility not to steal anything from you. Unfortunately, it's you "life lovers" who aren't fulfilling your responsibilitys-- Jack Kevorkian is in jail...why?... because he dared to have empathy and accepted practical reality? 11 people are dead and hundreds of others are horrifically injured because we as a society refuse to respect the "individual's right" not to be obligated to live any longer than their own desire. As a society we basically insist that if you want to kill yourself -- you'll have to deploy violent means to reliably do so. This belligerent unwillingness to respect an individual's "right to die" -- does inevitably lead to suicide with collateral damage. If you're not going to respect a persons right-to-die (or to utterly reject the putrid-war filled-world the greedy scum have created) -- peacefully and gracefully (as medical technology permits) than you forgo your right to expect the "dying" to respect your right or desire to live.
The great duplicity of our imbecilic social policy is seen-- in the fact but we have more empathy for household pets-- in pain --than for human beings and pain. It's disgusting and stupid and frankly just provides me another reason to be sickened by you blissfully ignorant jerks... and just more reason to want to get the hell out of here.
Wow anon,
You're bummin' me out.
Speaking as a "Life Junkie", who has seen depression and considered suicide, it's a difficult cesspool to pull yourself out of.
However, part of the key to pulling yourself out is to stop blaming others for your unhappiness, and make some sort of effort to make yourself better.
Like anything else in this life, nothing happens for you without a monumental amount of effort.
Yeah, life sucks.
Who told us it was supposed to be good all of the time? I must of missed that memo.
Your Kavorkian argument is not totally thought out is it? Since Kavorkian deals only with terminally ill people and their families.
Alvarez was a totally different situation.
Many people successfully kill themselves with little fanfare.
What Alvarez did was a selfish, abonimal act.
It was murder.
Let's sit back now and watch as he fights for his life in appeals courts.
Ahhh, the ironies of life.
Do us all a favour Anon, when you decide to leave the rest of us, don't take any life junkies who haven't decided to off themselves, who have families who love them and perhaps depend on them, out with you.
k?
Chris, I share your feelings about transit everyday. Is someone going to do something in The Transit System that will impact on me negatively? I often ask, "Is this person mumbling curses going to go off and I'm not going to make it home?"
Bubba, I respectfully disagree as this perpetrator had enough sense to jump out of the path of a speeding train. He suddenly got "clarity" when the train bound down on him and then wanted to save himself.
Radmila, as always, your perspective clarifies all. Nothing else needs to be said in reference to Anon #2 because of you statements.
Thanks to Anon #1 and everyone else for commenting. Your thoughts are appreciated.
"murder"??? what preposterous exaggeration! You claim that my Kevorkian reference is not "totally thought out" -- Yet, you think that it's a well thought out opinion that draws the conclusion that this guy intended to kill people other than himself-- murder is intention right? Anyway, the Kevorkian reference is relevant in that allowing the physically dying a graceful exit is the "A" of the human decency ABC's. A logical person doesn't make much distinction between someone who is catastrophically broken psychologically and one who is catastrophically broken physically. You concede there are no easy answers --yet you imply the society should obligate the mentally "broken" to invest their welfare in your "no answers" judgment. If YOU and Society would just mind its own business and stop presuming to know what's best for other people tragedies like this wouldn't happen. Respect is a two-way street-- you life lovers apparently think you're entitled to get what you not willing to give
Murder an exaggeration?
I think not.
When he decided to park his SUV on COMMUTER TRAIN TRACKS
he decided that there was a possibility that he was going to take others with him.
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that trains move people.
If he didn't intend to kill people, why didn't he gun the engine and move off the tracks instead of getting out and watching the collision?
His intention was to save his own ass.
I have nothing against someone who decides that they cannot stand it anymore and decides to commit suicide and does it quietly. Even though I do think it's a selfish act without regard to the people who love you...presumably the person has people who love them.
So, now from your response, I'm getting the impression that it's everyone elses fault that someone decides to commit suicide?
That is laughable.
Peopel need to take some responsibility for their own mental health as well. Some people are biologically damaged. For those, it's a sad and difficult path, but for many it's a side effect of a bloated, self-important society that we've created. Notice that statistics for depression in North America are the highest in the world...why is that when we have everything?
It's because we're whiney, self- indulgent and spoiled.
I'm sure that if we were living with a bomb going off at random, we would be less concerned with stupid little poor me-isms.
See columbine with the "trenchcoat mafia" who were not so much suffering from low self-esteem, as they were from over indulgent parents and superiority complexes.
Mind you, I realize that my words make no difference to someone who think as you do.
This is to the Anonymous Coward:
An article from the LA Times about the people who were killed in the train crash.
Mothers, fathers, wives and husbands are dead because of one man. I don't want to imagine what it must be like for some of these people involved. These people left their house in the morning never realizing that it would be their last time. How many of them left without saying goodbye, never dreaming that their life would be taken from them later that day because of some fool who didn't even stop once to think about how his action may impact the people around him.
If you take a person's life because you are driving to endanger you can be charged with vehicular homicide. You are responsible for your actions and just because you didn't have intent to murder someone doesn't mean you did not murder someone. This man destroyed lives and families because of his actions. You should be ashamed of yourself for trying to defend him in any form. Put yourself in the shoes of a family member of a person who was killed on that train. Lives extinguished because of the stupidity and selfishness of one little coward of a man who at the last moment jumped out of the truck because suddenly life was worth living for him. How can you even begin to defend his actions?
Chris
"If you and society would just mind your business and stop presuming to know what is best for other people tragedies like this wouldn't happen." This comment from Anon (2) is so absurd as that is precisely what most of society and specifically what those on that ill fated train were trying to do before a mentally unbalanced person decided to make his presence known in the most negative of ways - violently.
A society is the totality of social relationships among humans. And as such we have a responsibility to each other to be respectful of and to one another. That means people having a respectfullness that has boundaries. The comment, "Respect is a two-way street --- you life-lovers apparently think your entitled to get what you're not willing to give," is preposterous. Persons who love life are usually aware of what being respectful entails. It is this guy that was not respectful to himself and to others. To get on a train, minding your business and to do so with the dignity of paying your fare, not bumping anyone while walking onto the train, sitting in your seat, and doing all this in a mannerly way, and hoping everyone else in your vicinity does the same so that there is no drama and then, BAM, you have your life changed and possibly taken because some guy forces his sensibilities --I WANT TO DIE NOW-- upon people who were respectful and minding their business and wanted everyone else to do the same; a guy who knew enough at some point in his life to go into rehab twice, but refused to take the life lessons given during these times, who didn't mind his own business and tried to get into others with his suicidal actions, does not bolster your comments. These actions refute your comment. He should have minded his own business and been more respectful and done things privately, as sad as that would have been.
Chris and Radmila, thanks for commenting
justtopost, formerly known as anon, you are and continue to be rude and self-centered. I did not change anything about my comment section. Something has been wrong with the service and had to be fixed by Blogger Techies. So, please get over yourself.
justtopost,
Since your answer to everything is that the rest of us are "too simplistic", perhaps it would make your life better if you spent less time navel gazing, and blaming the rest of us for your misery, and getting a little simplistic yourself.
Sucks to be you.
Really.
I'm sorry for the segment of the population that has your outlook.
Life is difficult enough without making it harder on yourself with a shitty attitude.
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