On Suicide

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide,” wrote Albert Camus. “Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.”

Or, in the words of Shakespeare, “To be, or not to be, that is the question.”

And, as Pliny the Elder points out, “Not even to God are all things possible; for he could not compass his own death, if he willed to die, and yet in all the miseries of our earthly life, this is the best of his gifts to man.”

The only serious question in life, then, is should you exercise this power that not even God has?

What responsibility we bear!

If you’ve ever wrestled with suicide, you know what a serious question it is. It becomes a thorn in the mind, a wedge in the heart, a weight on one’s neck, a constant companion shackled at the hip.

Rarely does this question seem “philosophical” when wading through it. Whether or not to kill oneself is a flippant consideration—you’ve already determined to do that. The question becomes challenging, however, when you begin to consider how.

Will I jump? Or shoot? Or hang? Stay under water? Swallow or inject some poison? Jerk my steering wheel and veer into an oncoming semitruck?

And then comes the question of all questions: Am I capable? Do I have the courage? Do I have the guts to snuff myself from existence, to do what God cannot?

I am alive because I entered the world in the same way everybody does. But I remain alive today, I believe, because of this simple fact: I do not own a handgun.

If I did, I cannot confidently say that, while swimming through the dark depths of the question of all questions, I could have resisted the ease with which I might escape my suffering with the pull of a trigger. For all the purpose with which I seem to live, for all my apparent determination, I see my life, or the continuation of it, as largely accidental.

I have not answered that elemental philosophical question, at least not permanently. I have not found a reason to live, or my reason to live. I attempt an answer every day, and maybe that is enough. Few in this world, I think, wrestle with the question seriously at all, and fewer still resolve it.

But of those who wrestle with the question and do not reach an answer, life answers for them; they are preserved by grace.

If suicide is the philosophical question of all questions, perhaps grace is the wonder of all wonders.

It arrives from nowhere, out of time and season, undeserved, unearned, and puts all other questions and concerns to rest. “I am alright in the world. It is ok. Life goes on. How fortunate am I to live this life, my life, now.”

That’s the feeling of grace, and no man—though many pretend and speak falsely—can command it or point to it. It’s not something you find; it’s something that finds you.

When writhing in the throes of suicidality, grace seems to find a way. It does not resolve the question but dissolves it, in the way morning dissolves the night. One mood comes, another goes. And though grace arises only in interludes, if you contemplate it as deeply as you wrestle with the question of all questions, you see that it is equally poignant and profound.

Perhaps walking through such extremes—the gracious highs and suicidal lows—even the opportunity to walk through such extremes, to live extremely, is evidence that grace attends our way.

Maybe manic-depression is my superpower.

Note to self: hold onto that idea, not a handgun.