I’ve come across and been reading a lot about the devastating incline in suicides in our country, especially in teens. It truly is an epidemic. Numbers are skyrocketing. I believe around 30% across the country this year from last. A high school near me had 8 teens commit suicide this year alone. What?! The saddest part is, I don’t see that going down with the direction the world is heading.
There would be nothing worse for a family to go through. I’ve seen it with people I love dearly. It rips me apart and I can’t imagine the pain and suffering they feel each day.
I’m also seeing that “mental illness” is what’s ultimately being blamed in many articles and conversations. Which is true to a degree. However, I think we are missing the root cause to the problem. Which is that somehow we’ve forgotten God in all of this. We don’t even know why we are here.
When I say God, I don’t mean religion. I mean love. Because God is love. We are becoming spiritually weaker and weaker, each generation that passes. And because we’ve forgotten God, and forgotten (or don’t know how) to love one another, blaming something solely on mental illness would only make sense.
We’ve become (myself included) so self-interested, self-absorbed, self-centered, self-indulgent, self-serving, and self-loving. In other words, selfish. And in the end, there’s not many places to turn for peace; so sometimes suicide seems to be the only way out. Because peace can’t be found in the interest of ones “self”. It can only be found in love, in God.
In many ways, we’ve gotten to a point where we’ve sucked every ounce of the “what’s in it for me” world, and ultimately haven’t realized that it should never have been about “me” to begin with. As Maxwell has said, “Selfishness is self-destruction in slow-motion.” And at last, that’s what suicide is. Complete destruction of self.
I too know that depression is a very real thing. I battle it every morning. I don’t talk about it a lot because I try not to focus on it. But sometimes it’s crippling the entire day. Even to the point where I can’t see any hope. Even with my belief in God. And so I write this because I don’t know how anyone with my type of condition could do it without God. I truly don’t. It breaks my heart when I hear people end their lives.
I believe the biggest cure to this epidemic is to talk to each other, help each-other, pray for each other, and love each other; especially in our own individual spheres of influence.
Even if you don’t want to bring “God” into a conversation with someone who is suffering. Just bring love, because that’s what God is, love. And hopefully people who are truly suffering inside can feel that spirit of love inside of you, and gain some hope, and let that love grow in them. We can’t do it alone.
