Just Remember The Child

One of my favorite books, a fiction novel called The Shack, attempts to address the problem of suffering through a Christian point of view. In asking me to read the book, my mother hoped that I would learn how to deal with any future suffering or challenges that I may undergo. In the novel, the protagonist Mack is plunged into a “Great Sadness” after a serial killer abducts and murders his daughter, Missy. He remains an emotional wreck until God personally intervenes in his life. In reading The Brothers Karamazov and Immortality, just as in reading The Shack, I have come to appreciate the importance of God in shaping my understanding of suffering, and the meaning of a life-well-lived.

For most of my life, I never thought much about suffering. In fact, I tend not to philosophize much about anything. Whenever I would see a starving child on television, I would not ask God why he allowed the child to suffer. Instead, I would ask him to hasten my “growing up”, so that I could have enough resources to feed the child. Now I know that things will not be any easier when I finally “grow up”. Someone somewhere may always suffer, and my resources may not always be enough. Still, I must learn to confront suffering with the treasure that I have within me. Some people will choose to question the suffering in the world, yet refrain from answering it. Some, like Lize in The Brothers Karamazov, will construct their own suffering. Others, like Laura in Immortality, will think that their suffering exceeds the suffering of other people. For most of us, suffering will define our lives. Indeed, I am now convinced that my response to the suffering in my world will determine whether I will have lived my life well.

In my conversations with God concerning the starving child on TV, I never saw the need to question him. After reading and talking about suffering, I can see the reason for questioning him, but I still don’t see the need to. Although both Milan Kundera and Fyodor Dostoyevsky may hold different views from me, they seem to come up with alternatives to questioning God—cocooning oneself, challenging the world, and active love. Although I believe that all these approaches suit different people in different seasons of life, I still consider God an important part of my equation. What will matter at the end of my life is not how I questioned God, but how I chose to respond to the suffering in my world.

On 17th January of this year, a childhood friend of mine passed away. Interestingly, her death mirrors the Job story. Although she was a wonderful human being who loved God dearly, she still passed on. I remember calling my high school teacher on the day I received the news. “You won’t get much out of questioning God”, he advised me, “in fact, he may give you an answer that you don’t want to hear.” In thinking back on my teacher’s words, I have come to understand the wisdom in them. Suffering, in its many different forms, will always be with us. We may not get much out of questioning the world, God or ourselves. Indeed, I still find philosophizing a futile endeavor for me. Luckily, Kundera and Dostoyevsky have philosophized on my behalf. In so doing, they have helped to shape my death. Like Dostoyevsky, I want to practice active love until I die. Like Kundera, I want people to forget me after I die. Unlike both authors, however, I want people to remember a different kind of legacy from my life—I only want people to remember to feed the child I will have left behind.

Breaking the Silence on Suicide

I have always wondered what makes people so depressed to the point of taking their own lives. After listening to two friends who admitted to having suicidal thoughts, I think I know the answer. One of my friends lost her brother last year, and the other constantly struggled to get good grades in her exams. Putting myself in their shoes, I imagined what would happen to me if I were to oscillate between moods of extreme happiness and extreme sadness. Taking a trip down memory lane, I would probably remember the friends who were mere wolf in sheep’s clothing, the bullying that I underwent in my childhood, the desire to fit in that made me go to extreme lengths, and the hope that one person could truly love and appreciate me just the way I am. Essentially, I would have to live the life of a manic-depressive.

Manic-depressives have to deal with a disease that eats up their zest for life. Helpless in the face of pessimism, they only need to determine the time when to kill themselves. Although suicide is a delicate subject, I sincerely wish that society would be more open in talking about it. As we focus more on upcoming lifestyle diseases, we tend to forget that suicide still comes with a fast paced lifestyle focused on self-awareness. No one simply wakes up one day and decides to end his or her life; only mentally disturbed people engage in such thoughts. Yet my friends, healthy and full of life, found themselves in this entrapment.

Had they chosen to end their lives, they would have required a firm conviction that their lives would never improve, even if they lived one more day. Caught in the final stage of this conviction, they would fearlessly execute the final irreversible act. Luckily, my friends never had enough courage to take their own lives. Abandoning their suicidal thoughts, they chose to focus on the turmoil their deaths would cause their respective families. Still, not every suicidal person can reach this point. For these individuals, society may be somewhat responsible for the deaths. Most people have a support system—not necessarily a family, but people who surround us and form part of our immediate environment. Unfortunately, we may be so caught up in our own lives that we fail to see the pain in others’ lives. More importantly, we fail to see the point where they cross over. Only after the person is gone do we bother to investigate what triggered such a violent act. We judge them because we are convinced that they could have found happiness had they held on to their lives. The bitter truth is that we neither lived the lives they did nor experienced the pain that they had endured. Judging them will not answer the question that we ought to be asking ourselves, “What could we have done different?” It’s not enough to just blame them for hurting us, for not looking at the silver lining in the cloud. What we fail to understand is that perhaps their pain blinded them—their manic depression sucked life out of their lives. Living a painful pressured life, they eventually chose to take the easy way out.

After pondering on the lives of manic-depressives, I have decided not to jump to conclusions or judgments whenever I hear about a suicide. Instead I will ask myself: “Do I know someone who I can help?” And even if I don’t, I will remember to say a kind word to everyone: ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to people who I don’t know, and ‘I love and appreciate you’ to people who I have formed intimate bonds with. I don’t know if my words will to save them from themselves, but I hope that suicide will make me appreciate everyone, even in the smallest of ways.

Honoring You