Thursday, July 2, 2009

Never quit and keep going (#153)

I found out recently that an old acquaintance and friend had died by his own hand. These last few years had been a real strain on him and he began acting strangely to his family and friends. I don't know the extent of the troubles he was living with but I do know that he forced most of us away because of them. It is moments like this when I am told someone has given up and committed suicide that I feel selfish. I wonder why it is I was able to push through when I considered suicide and chose not to quit on life and he did. It has been my opinion that there are two human traits we are all born to have in our lives continually, compassion and curiosity. However there is one more non-quantifiable instinct that I could not fit into the compartments of caring and wondering, and that would be the instinct to survive. As humans we are born with the instinct to survive since it identifies our will just to move beyond the birthing process. The degree with which we apply our survival instinct within our own lives has variance however. Some have great survival instincts and endure to live through the most depressing and traumatic experiences imaginable. While others would quit on life as if hope could never exist for them. Survival of our individual self is unique to all of us, but the will to survive within all of us is different. I would hope that survival of each of ourselves could be strengthened through being educated that our existence is a gift that should never be given away without an all out fight to keep it.

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