Lifeguard Column by Nicolo F. Bernardo
THE YOUTH are the hope of the future. That’s the classic line from Jose Rizal. But what now when the youth are despaired of the future, such as the classic case of the young suicidal Marianette Amper?
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Suicidal attempts could be indications of how a particular environment or situation has made life unbearable, if not impossible, to its members. They tell that certain people already in the margins are continuously being pushed to their limits as to romanticize death. It is not a phenomenon exclusive to man, but to beasts as well, when coping mechanisms could break down and death is seen as the only escape.
What could be in the mind of a suicidal, especially a young suicidal? Psychologists would say that it could be a person thinking that continuing life, despite his years ahead, would simply extend or worsen situations; that it would most likely be an unfolding of more Nos and Nevers; that one has become a burden even to himself. Thus, the thought that it must all be brought into a halt. Game over.
The fear of the possibility of inferno after suicide may be no deterrent when a person thinks that he is already living a life like one, and enduring further might only be a journey to the lowest circles of life’s pits, and more hells anyway. A person committing suicide, I think, is waging a stake, waging for possible plights of rest or relief, if not forgiveness, by throwing oneself to what is beyond life. It is the thought that there could be more possibilities in that much unknown realm than in the life here and now.
The reason behind a suicide reveals how a society may have demeaned life’s value or meaning more or less equivalent to other goods, so much so that these goods’ loss must go with the price of life. Or it reveals how life has been made unsustainable or inhuman, remembering the words of Patrick Henry: “Give me liberty or give me death.”
Every news of suicide is saddening. It tells so much about the state of life we share, and that it must take endeared lives just to call attention, to cry for help, who were hardly heard, understood, or televised when they were still living.
Who are part to blame? Are our schools, institutions, and our so-called “upgrading” standards of living been themselves constricting or life-affirming? Do our demands and material conditions help the least privileged appreciate life, or we are the first to break a wedge on who’s who has worthy and unworthy living, favorable and unfavorable life ahead? Are we part of society’s matrices that produce endless stress, guilt, and self-doubt? Can we tell that we are not part of making other lives “the others,” the better-off-dead?
The death of Amper gives us many lessons. It opened graves. The lesson that children are also susceptible to discrimination, depravity, and depression. That children too may already be into deep and serious thinking, contemplating the very viability of their future, their dreams, their goals. That kids need people who are not only there to promise a better tomorrow, but to let them see how that could be a living reality, a truth to live.
Most of all, it reminds us that poverty and human fulfillment are warranted issues for a culture of life, against the culture of death and death wishes.
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