Suicide

Life is a struggle. 

To live is to experience pain.

But to focus on that pain, is to make it become larger (see Seeing).

To blame someone else for that pain only leads to suffering (see Suffering).

If you take a sheet of paper, and you put a dot on it, you can say:

The paper is no good anymore, and should be thrown away; OR

The paper has a dot on it, but the other side is still fine; OR

The paper has a dot on it, but it still can be used.

On “The Popeye Show”, Tom Hatten, the host, would put a squiggle on a sheet of paper, with a marker. To most of us, we would think that the paper was messed up. But Tom Hatten, after a moment of thought, would draw in more lines and turn the squiggle into a picture. He would do that week after week. He always came up with picture, maybe not always a great one, but still a decent picture.

When you are young, the sadness and pain you experience can seem unbearable. When you are young, all of your feelings are magnified, so you feel both happiness and sadness very intensely. In the section on suffering, I use an example of a saw blade (see Suffering). When you are young, it is like putting a magnifying glass up to a saw blade. Suddenly the blades high and low points seem like huge mountains and valleys. As you get older, it is like removing that magnifying glass. 

To despair is to give up and think that the pain will never go away. Let me assure you that as you get older, that magnifying glass of youth will begin to fade. That means that the pain and suffering that you feel now will seem less painful a year or two from now. The sad part of growing older is that you will also loose that youthful magnified sense of joy. Let me assure you that as you get older, the joys you do experience are still wonderful (see Heaven and Hell).

Life is a struggle. 

To live is to experience pain.

Hang in there (see Seven Stages, Persevere).