Repost (from entry way back on 2003)

Let’s imagine for a moment you have created a country.  Would you make it a place where people would want to live.  Would a free flow of immigration and emigration be allowed?

I believe a person’s life is somewhat like that country.  Is it the responsibility of the people with vested interest in this particular person’s life to create an environment which injects in them the desire to live?

Everyone talks about prying guns from people’s hands and pumping out aspirin-filled stomachs.  But often by the time it has gotten this far, they are already far-gone.  I think in many ways the lust for suicide that may or may not preceed an unsuccessful or successful attempt is worse than the suicide act itself.  The desire to not exist is perhaps the most anti-instinctual drive inside of man.  Basically to get to this point, a losing battle has to be out of the person’s hands, a situation where one can neither fight nor flee.  They bloodied their hands slapping at the panic button, because no one told them it was painted on the wall.

Starving people can hardly eat, and those who have gotten along without the desire to live for too long have trouble feeling connected to life long after fleeing whatever put their hope out.