Six Considerations When Battling Suicidal Thoughts, health, hope, life, wellness, depression

Considerations When Battling Suicidal Thoughts

In the classic movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” business man George Bailey (James Stewart) is about to jump off a bridge and drown when an angel appears and shows him what life would have been life if he hadn’t existed. But what if the angel showed George not what life would have been like if he were never born, but what life would be like in the aftermath of his suicide-- how his friends and family would have coped with the loss, and possibly people he had no idea he had influenced? Pain can be blinding. In an effort to relieve himself of the suffering, a person can easily lose sight of his reasons for living. In case you ever get to a state of desperation, here are a few to keep in mind.

Your Life Matters

You might not think you’ve done anything substantial with your life. You may have never graduated from college or held a real job. Maybe all you’ve done is deliver pizzas. You think you’re expendable, but you’re not. Every act of kindness that you have shown throughout your life matters—every smile to every hungry, rude, obnoxious kid to whom you handed a warm pizza, and his exhausted and frantic mom who needed change. Those moments you thought you were useless—when you listened to friend cry over a boyfriend who dumped her, or when you helped your sister buy her first car—you were needed, indispensable. Your words and actions were critical. Charles Dickens once wrote: “No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of another.”

Even the Bad Stuff is Good

True story. One February day, a woman took her two-year-old and his friend, whom she was babysitting, to feed the ducks near a deep creek. Her two-year-old pushed the other two-year-old into the frigid water. The woman couldn’t go in after him because she was wearing her four-month-old baby to her chest. A man sitting at the dock eating his lunch saw what happened, dove into the water, and rescued the kid. Why is this good? That man was never the same. The feeling of satisfaction he got from saving the boy’s life—and the recognition from the city for a heroic deed that followed—was enough to inspire him to chase his childhood dream of becoming an actor, which he did! All this happened because that woman was alive and took two kids to feed the ducks.