SUICIDE - part 2

THIS POST IN WRITTEN IN ENGLISH IN A SWEDISH BLOGG. IN ORDER TO READ IT YOU MUST CLICK ON THE BUTTON "ORIGINAL LANGUAGE" AT THE TOP!


2.     Who has the responsibility for a suicide – only the individual or perhaps also the environment?

I have been reflecting over the big differences between different countries when it comes to this topic. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that suicide or not is dependent on the society you live in: norms, religion, poverty, climate and culture.

Japan has had an attitude to suicide that was positive once. I’m thinking about hara-kiri. This was done in order to die with some honour left, instead of going on as a looser. Some suicides were good or even the norm. That's perhaps not the situation today but still the young people feel a tremendous preassure to be high achievers and if they fail they might kill themselves.

So, the individual can not be the only one to blame if we have to blame all these people who choose to die. Rather the whole society has to take on some responsibility for this. In America most people have a gun. And how good is that if someone gets an impulse to kill himself? This method is very quick and effective. Perhaps this is part of the reason for the large number of suicides?
Social problems need to be solved before we can judge. 

How people who try to kill themselves are treated have a big importance. In Sweden I wrote how they get punished instead of helped. There is no mercy. Nobody ask you why you did it.
I have stopped looking for the Exit door now. Why? Well, one thing is that I’m getting sicker and older so things will take care of themselves eventually. When I’m threatened by severe illness I tend to struggle for my life. It’s when things get calmer but I’m just isolated and bored, that’s when the risk returns. 

However I’ve stopped taking overdoses. Why? Because I died, that’s why. It took a miracle to get the police to my apartment in spite of the hard work from internet-friends.  It took more than 8 hours.
The nurses in the ambulance and the doctors actually succeeded in getting me back to life. For some seconds they forced me up to the surface shouting: “Look at us!!!” (They couldn’t give me gastric lavage without active reflexes from the bowels and if not I would die) 

For a few seconds I saw a lot of people working hard to save my life, some sitting at computers watching what was happening within my body. They were so many and so hard working. When they could get some of all the pills up I heard them shouting for joy. I felt their genuine joy and love, how happy they were that they had saved my life. 

LOVE – it’s the key, the only way to make someone choose to stay on earth. I think about this event with big gratitude. I remember their love, and the enormous costs…just for me…and then I have to pay back by using my best days or moments by showing someone else love. That’s why we are here!

3.     In what extent are we allowed to play God and keep people who partly already are dead or in coma tied up to a machine that doesn’t allow their spirit to leave the body?

I think this question has to be lift up and discussed much more. If we are so afraid of death that we can’t let people die who are practically dead then we are going too far. Many treatments can actually be questioned. They can be extremely painful and go on and on for so long that the patient has no will left to go through all that pain just to lie in a bed. My sick mother kept her cancer secret in order to be able to come out of her hopeless situation. She was 85. Her old neighbour jumped from the balcony to come out of hers. If society want to prolong old people’s lives they also must give them an environment to live in that is worthy. Care homes for elderly are gradually taken away in Sweden.

 4.  Why should a person who is in deep suffering, without any hope whatsoever that things will change for the better, just remain in her suffering if there is an alternative? Does she have the right to end the suffering. If not – how come?

This question is really difficult. If we are not eternal it is just a question of showing consideration to people close to you, if there are any.

But if we are eternal it’s another story. Many of us believe that the meaning of life is to learn to love, to show love and – a bit wiser – go back to the source of Life. 

This is what a strong, spiritual experience outside my body taught me. I was in a state of love and peace outside my body listening to a strong voice that spoke to me about the meaning of my life.  Nowadays I believe there is a meaning in staying in pain and isolation. I believe in the Law of Dying. What I think about are the word of Jesus:

He said: "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains only a single seed, but if it dies it bears abundant fruit."

The law of dying is symbolized by that seed lying helplessly in that dark and cold soil. If the seed had the capacity to worry as we humans have it would ask itself every day: "What's the meaning with me lying here, not seen by anybody, without any function, any progress, no life, dying alone?" But as far as I know they can't question life, just live it. And when it does, it dies and something starts growing towards the light. A force inside it makes it drill itself through the ground; it meets the light and develops into grain, into bread that reduces the hunger of the world!

We are that grain. So, no matter how meaningless a life might look – it isn’t! We are not here to be happy, but to give our lives to suffering humans around us.
I like the after life book “Embraced by the light” and the story Betty Eadie tells us fits rather well into my own encounters with the “other side”. I recommend the videos you can find about her in the You Tube! She warns us to commit suicide since that might lead us into darkness on the other side. 

Betty: “God judges according to the heart. He explained to me that people who commit suicide, or any other act that is horrid, are people who are dysfunctional; they have mutated -- their souls mutated somewhere along the line, perhaps even at birth, perhaps genetic problems. You know, we are not to judge, only He can judge. But that to condemn someone to hell is the greater sin, which is something we should never, ever do.”


Sometimes I can go out, like the other day. I knew I could not walk more than 800 meters, so I could not afford to choose the wrong path to a new acquaintance. I hoped I would find someone to ask along the way. Suddenly there was a small, child at my side. He looked at me with so much love and said: "Where are you going?" I answered: "To Pinestreet, but I don't know how to find it." "I live there. I WILL GO WITH YOU AND SHOW YOU THE WAY!"

This is how I survive: I just try to open up my heart for the guidance life wants to give the brokenhearted.

I WILL GO WITH YOU AND SHOW YOU THE WAY! 

SUICIDE - okey or not?

This post is written in English - in my Swedish blogg! So, in order to be able to read it you have to click on ORIGINAL LANGUAGE!

Otherwise this text will bli translated into some kind of uncomprehendable rubbish.

I’m now going to write two posts in English: 1. because the translation machine doesn’t work well enough
2. Because this topic is a very important and global one. I like to discuss taboos.  ALL kind of problems must be taken up into the light and discussed so that we can develop a higher consciousness about this social problem that is buried under layers and layers of fear, shame, guilt, hatred and condemnation. Some questions I ask myself are:

1.  Why are there so big differences between countries when it comes to this problem? Some countries have a very high suicide rate and some very low. Why?

 2.  Who has the responsibility for a suicide – only the individual or perhaps also the environment?

3.  In what extent are we allowed to play God and keep people who partly already are dead or in coma tied up to a machinse that doesn’t allow their spirit to leave the body?

 4.  Why should a person who is in deep suffering, without any hope whatsoever that things will change for the better, just remain in her suffering if there is an alternative? Does she have the right to end the suffering. If not – how come?

Let’s start with the first question. Some statistics are useful here since they make you think and perhaps find some answers. We can’t trust this figures too much, especially when it comes to dictatorships, but it’s better than nothing I think.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate

Let’s start with Sweden, since that’s where I live and was born. Sweden has the reputation among Americans to be the country where people love to take their own lives. Well, according to the statistics we are number 35 on the ranking list. The USA: nr 36, that is not much better, is it? Well, why are Swedes suicidal?

Many young people here don’t see any future. The unemployment rate is huge: 30 % among young people (up to 26). It is very common that young girls cut themselves with racer blades, burn themselves with cigarettes and take overdoses. So, what happens if they seek help for this?  They will be treated like criminals by the healthcare, told off and in different ways punished for it – locked up in a hospital or a prison for mentally ill criminals. But they will not get the change to talk things over with a shrink – unless they have rich parent who can pay for a private shrink.

60 % of singles older than 65 use pills and alcohol in order to survive their isolation. The children might live far away and here the families don’t take responsibility for each other more that in rare cases. No brother would pay the bills for his sick sister who has lost her sick leave because the government nowadays says that everybody is healthy enough to work again if they have been home during one year and a half. 

These new rules have lead to several suicides. In an English paper I read that a Swedish woman who killed herself when she lost her benefits must have done it for mental reasons since she had two grown up sons who could support her. They writer didn’t understand that a Swedish child would never support his old, sick mother. We are atheistic, individualist and everybody is left on her own.
Now that the welfare system we once had has fallen apart, people die because the culture is built on a socialistic basis and it will take decades for people to realize that the in common welfare is gone and that we now, within what’s left of the families, must take a responsibility similar to what existed a hundred years ago. The development here is similar to the one in Russia.

The cold climate makes it hard to get in contact with other people. Fellowship is usually built on activities of different kinds, which exclude people like me to take part of it. You can’t visit  a pub or a bar to have a chat with the locals. Pubs are often closed, except for the weekend, and if you are older that 40 they will laugh at you. The pubs are like brothels, where men go to find a one night stand. Real prostitution is forbidden. 
To find someone to talk to, in this not hospitable country, is hard. There are few natural venues.

At the top of the ranking list there are countries with little or no democracy, some also with cold climate, which in combination with poverty is a disaster. Warm weather promotes contact between people and it’s easier to survive.

The lowest suicide rate is on Haiti, from 2003. Did they have trust wordy statistics there? Well, before the earthquake I guess it was kind of a paradise to live there? Islands with sand beeches and palm trees – that’s for many of us just a dream. There are several sunny islands that show a low suicide rate. Perhaps they can live a more natural life than most of us? But as we know many of the islands are taken over by the see gradually, or earthquakes…

I lived in the Netherlands for a while, 8 years ago, when I was exhausted by my attempts to help homeless abusers that couldn’t get any real help from the community. I hade read about the Dutch methods to solve social problems. I needed a vacation from a country that suffers from severe denial when it comes to these matters. In NL (ranking 51) I spent a lot of time in the pubs talking to people who had normal problems, like with relationships for example. Those could come up at a few occasions but the Swedes constant complaining about society, politicians, the numerous immigrants, the fading away welfare and the terrible weather, I was delivered from.  I didn’t live in an atmosphere of constant bitterness and suppressed wrath there. Friendships and responsibility for friends and family was taken much more seriously there than I had seen in Sweden.

My new friends did drink some bears every day, but not so much that they got drunk. They made everyone relax and together we felt joyful because we had each other, a fellowship with low demands and higher acceptance than at home. We made jokes and laughed a lot. The local pub was always open and there was usually someone to talk to, which of course is a way to diminish the loneliness that often triggers suicide.

I do understand that the suicide rate is lower in Holland. Nobody has to fear an extremely painful and slow death, since persons who are so sick that there is nothing more to life that to wait for a painful death, have the right to Euthanasia. If this assisted “suicide” is included in the figures I don’t know.
Before my last “war” started – against cancer this time - I had emigration plans. I was reading about Malta. My joints need warmth. My soul needs company and in southern Europe people usually sit out in bars and talk half the night when it’s cooler. Warmth make people talk more and in Malta most people speak English. Dutch I couldn’t learn! In the ranking list I saw that the amount of suicides was four times lower that in Sweden!!!

SUICIDE AND RELIGION

Sweden is the most atheistic country in the world which of course promotes suicide. If you think the body AND the soul/spirit cease to exist it’s easier to kill yourself then if you are a Maltese Catholic that believes in heaven, purgatory and hell. “Where will I go if I do what the Bible forbids?” That is a thought that might stop many from doing it.

India, known for it’s extreme poverty is ranked 44, lower than many rich countries. Why?  Indians often believe in reincarnation and that the life I live right now determines what the next life will be like. So I’d better live for developing my spirituality, ability to love and to do what’s right. I don’t want to come back to a life that’s even worse than this, I want to go higher. Such thoughts also are preventive. 

Muslims I’m sure have the same fear for hell as Christians. But as we know they might blow themselves up in order to defeat the enemy and come to heaven that way. These teachings can be used by those who are looking for suitable, suicide bombers. That’s really tragic. I met one man from Tunisia that left for this reason, he wanted to avoid being killed this way. He was traumatised and later on he tried to commit suicide, but this dragged me, who was praying for him, into a miracle. My spirit somehow suddenly was with him in the waters where he was drowning and called out to God to save his life – and he did. My body was in my bed, awoken by all the splashing and gurgling sounds from the waters in the Mediterranean see, where he was.

More reflections (2-4) follow in the next post. If this was readable it’s nice if you write me and say so. Klick on “kommentarer”.