"What's the point?". Potent reasons to choose for life over death.

TL;DR: summary at the bottom.

I notice that there's a lot of people who easily get discouraged to go on living by what seems to be a relenting stream of heaviness and suffering of all sorts. Understandably, some people start to question what the point of living at all is if pain really just seems to be the protruding factor in their life. Despair comes out of that lack of a higher vision, a higher possibility. I feel for those who do not have such a vision, who do not have a hope to hold on to; or perhaps they have a slight thread of hope to some outer circumstance in their life that stay may change. But attachments to outer circumstances are impossible to gain lasting satisfaction off.

I want to give you a few reasons or perspectives that give you an incentive to fully commit to choosing life. I say this as someone who has had experience with suicidal feelings and tendencies. If you had/have suicidal tendencies, then, as you’ve noticed, being in the zone where you doubt whether or not you should continue living yet simultaneously clinging to life causes you a great amount of distress. This is understandable. Nobody really wants to die; nobody really wants to choose suicide. They just want the pain to stop. But meanwhile, you are still very much attached to your mind, to your body, and to the environment and people around you. Both your survival instinct and your emotional attachments you’ve built up during the course of your life are preventing you from ending it all. But if you only have that preventing you from stepping out of life, that is really no position to live in. It is in fact merely existing, nothing more. You need reasons why you would want to live, why you would want to continue. You need to start believing that choosing life is for the best. Alternatively, you can also choose to commit to death, to commit to suicide. If that is your choice, I respect that. It is in a better position than for the rest of your life being stuck in the place where you are torn in between life and death; that implies a great deal of misery. But I would neither recommend choosing death nor am I writing this post for those who are committed to death. If you are convinced that suicide is the only option, then you’re free to go. I feel for you, I do not want you to step out of life, but it’s your choice. This post is for those who want to live, whose spark for life is intense enough that they can pull through it and make it to the opposite of misery and resistance. Even if now everything seems so dark and hopeless I promise you that it will not always stay that way, even if that thought seems so convincing to you. It is in fact an universal law that every valley hides a mountain behind it. And don’t forget: The pain creates space for the peak to emerge. But more importantly, it gives you depth.

Without further a due, here are the perspectives and ideas I can offer as to why you should choose for life. I’ve carefully selected and explained the arguments in such a way that it does not come down so much on blindly having faith in my words, but that it’s easier for you to agree with my argumentation through your own rational intelligence, no matter the background of your conditioning.

- If you are depressed, anxious or otherwise intoxicated by negativity, you are completely DRUNK
There is a lot of pain active in you that stuffs the mind with desperate and negative thoughts. Eckhart Tolle calls this the pain-body. If you are in deep suffering, your mind is then designed to keep you in that place. Just watch your thoughts: How much of them are based on a negative story of yourself? How much of them keep on repeating thoughts of despair, self-hatred, sadness, grief, worry, anger etc? You take these thoughts so seriously, you identify with them so much that you forget that there is another side to the story. If you are angry, for instance, you can think: “I can’t believe what this person did to me! It is completely unfair!”. You don’t consider that that person, just like you, is probably in a decent amount of pain which caused him/her to act the way he/she did. Nobody who goes out to intentionally make people feel bad can be a happy person. Alternatively, the person may not even have been aware that you considered their action as offensive. You may for instance want to take revenge, completely forgetting the fact that you become exactly what you detested. And so the cycle of anger and hatred continues…
Or you may think for instance: “I now have another bout of depression. I always keep going back to it! It will never stop!”. Now stop yourself. You forget the fact that depression does not last eternally and that better times will come too. When you are in such a negative state, you start to think that your entire life will be and potentially has been as bad as you feel right then and there. If you feel negative, so will your thoughts about a projected future be. But just notice this: If you feel good, then whatever hope (even if before that hope was very dim) you previously had about a prosperous future will be amplified. Now the future suddenly seems brighter and you once again feel like things could be okay.

So remember that: Your current mood colors the content of your thoughts. Never get too identified with these thoughts, not even the positive ones. They are merely focused on one side of the many perspectives about life and yourself: either positive or negative. For every perspective why things wouldn’t get better there is a perspective for why things would get better. Neither has significance. Life does not unfold in the future. It unfolds NOW. Read “the power of now” by Eckhart Tolle to get a better perspective of what I mean by that statement. Does that mean thoughts and ideas have no significance at all? Then why am I writing this? That is not what I mean. Thoughts based on a thorough (self-)study of reality and existence have a certain significance, because they can be pointers to a way of being, to a way of carrying yourself. Thoughts that are based on emotions and feelings, however, are entirely out of proportion and do not at all represent an accurate depiction of reality. It is like having an ugly and a pretty side of a coin and then only looking at the ugly side of the coin, and then saying that is what reality is like; Or looking at the pretty side of the coin and saying THAT is what existence is like. Existence is the entire coin. Don’t forget that.

- “This too will change”. After every low comes a high, after every high comes a low
This argument build on the last one. Existence operates in cycles: Birth and death, expansion and contraction (like the pumping of your heart or the rhythm of your breath), suffering and happiness. Just notice it in your own life: Back when(/if) you were in relationship with your first love, didn’t everything seem to be so peaceful and happy? Didn’t you feel invincible and felt like you could take on the entire world? And what happened after that? Let me guess: Either you broke apart which came paired with a lot of emotional or possibly even physical violence, and a lot of hatred, shouting, gossiping, accusations, blackmailing or whatever have you… Or potentially you stayed together but the love dried out… it was just a formal and mechanical relationship at a certain point. This is one obvious example. Or take going out with your friends to a party where you got yourself drunk. At that evening you had a great amount of fun. But how did you feel the next day? Even with happiness that has seemingly no cause, just beware. A couple hours, days or sometimes weeks or months after, you will suddenly find yourself in a negative stretch that was just as intense and long as the positive one was. Now does this mean you should be sad because you know happiness can not last forever? Well, not really. Even though I feel that the cyclistic nature of existence and moods is factual, that does not mean that I think that the average, the baseline of your mood can’t be increased over time, even though it still remains cyclic. There are a lot of people that I’ve witnessed that have embodied such a transformation of finding the upward trend, and they now have so much more depth and peace within them. And this brings me to my next point

- Find a mentor, teacher, guru or guide who you feels embodies a more permanent state of happiness peace and/or depth.
Even though they are quite the uncommon lot, it is certainly possible to find mentors and teachers who walk the talk, who radiate peace and happiness as they’re talking about its possibilities. It may be hard to believe that there is potential for a happy and peaceful life as a more permanent reality (remember, nobody is invulnerable to moments of pain altogether), but if you see someone who embodies peace and radiance, then you actually start to take merit in it. Find those mentors, find those teachers. You may also find a figure who may still be accompanied by some or a lot of mental health issues, but whose compassion and/or wisdom still really touches your and who you can feel inspired by. Certain examples that I can give of people who helped me a lot or I looked up to throughout the past couple of years are these: Osho, Ozen Rajneesh, Eckhart Tolle, RSDTyler/rsdfreetour (the whole RSD brand is great, really. Search them up on youtube), Elliot Hulse, Teal Swan, Infinite waters, Dan Millman, Paulo Coelho, Bignoknow (on Yt). Those have been my mentors and teachers over the past few years. Osho in particular has just blown my mind (though it’s dangerous if you read too much of him. It can really confuse you)

- You don’t know what potential life could offer.
How old are you? In your twenties? Thirties? Fourties perhaps? Chances are that you, the reader, are perhaps not even a quarter of your total lifespan. Most people familiar with the intricacies of the internet are not that old, so I assume that most of you are at least under the age of 50. Or perhaps you are an old-timer suffering from a lot of mental health-issues; that happens too. If that’s the case and you feel that this argument would not provide too much solace for you, I want to remind you to read the other arguments as well. Regardless, even if you are older there is still a lot of experiences that you have not had yet, still so much ideas to look in to. Some of the ideas are vastly different than you have been used to. There is still so much experiences to be had, young or old. Now ask yourself: If you’re considering committing suicide, do you really feel like you have the right to do so before you have explored every possibility, every potential of life, having searched in every different direction and having tried radically different and even opposing ideas? Do you really feel that at this point you have the right to say that you’ve done it all and seen it all and that there’s no hope for happiness left? If you do, you’re either a master at self-deception or you’ve never really known how to commit and surrender. Because this happens too: Some people try out hundreds of different things during their lifetime, being much more adventurous than the average human being, but they’ve always half-assed it and quit it before even giving it a fair chance and then later in their life conclude that there’s nothing that can make them happy. But I say to you: If you know how to fully commit and fully surrender to whatever you’re doing, then the very next thing or technique will liberate you. Then you don’t need to try hundreds of different techniques, ideas, ambitions… The quality of how you commit to you explorations are SOOO much more important than the quantity. Because in your surrender you drop the mind and all its doubts, resistances and miseries. Remember this: If you are very attached to your mind, then mind IS doubt and thus confusion, then mind IS misery, then mind IS problems, then mind IS resistance. Learn to simply to do something without questioning why. Simply do it because you want to train how to surrender to something. And if you really don’t want to do it, then drop it, but drop it completely. Either surrender to it fully or let go of it completely, at least in the moment you’re considering it.

But if you find yourself unable to surrender fully and completely to something, then go ahead and try dozens or hundreds of different things. Perhaps after that you will realize that none of them worked because you didn’t work. But in either case, don’t give up before you’ve really, REEALLY tried!

- You don’t know if life ends if your body does
The general consensus in the east is: If you die, you will reincarnate to take care of unfinished business you have not resolved in the past life or lives, until you achieve enlightenment and will not return to another body again. This idea may sound scary to you because you may think of it as a continuation of your suffering or quite a while still, but once again I say: You only think of it so grimly because right now you are drunk with your negativity. There are many great experiences waiting for you, whether it would be in this life or a potential next life. Additionally to that, remember that right now the world as a whole is making a great leap from unconsciousness to consciousness right now. That gap goes paired with lots of growing pains and suffering. It’s not to say that —would reincarnation exist— that every life following this one would be as difficult as the one you’re experiencing right now. We in the west view reincarnation as superstitious. However, the originally western idea of heaven and hell in that matter does not sound any less superstitious. That is why there have been a lot of atheists emerging. They say that there is only one life and nothing after that because there is no proof for anything after this life. They think they are being rational. But how, would I challenge them, can anyone experiment in a lab with something that lies beyond the reach of the mind and the senses? Science can do experiments that are confined to the realm of the senses and the mind to a certain extent as well. It can not and should not say anything about that which it can not properly conduct a study of. It is foolish to think that just because there is no evidence for something that it would be rational to believe that it could not exist. I’m not saying to blindly believe in something either. Just admit: You don’t know.
There have however been stories of people who could recall past lives and the details of their memories appeared to be accurate, even though they have never been in the area where they say they lived in their past lives. Why are such findings not internationally recognized as scientific evidence for reincarnation? It’s simple. It’s not something society wants to believe in general, so it’s not financed and studied thoroughly —and it doesn’t find its way in most major mainstream scientific journals and media outlets, because they thereby would be potentially risking their reputation, or perhaps the heads of the corporations itself already claim to be a hoax. Mainstream society simply gets the input it requests, and therefore is mainly just offered information they want to believe, or which the government wants them to believe. Luckily, alternative sources of media are now out there, but they are not the mainstream.

Now is this to say that you should believe in the theory of reincarnation? Don’t believe. Nothing is absolutely certain in life, except the fact that you are aware, that you are awareness. Besides that, nothing can really be known with absolute certainty. All just thoughts and interpretations. I have a certain trust that reincarnation exists not because of theory but because I sense that I am more than just my body, and that therefore if my body dies I do not cease to exist. That’s the sense that I have. I sense more depth to my being than what can be perceived with the senses or the mind. That’s all. And have you not had that sense either? That sometimes, in rare moments, you experienced a certain depth and tranquility and simply felt, just felt, that life simply unfolded exactly as it should as if guided by a higher power? That all the pain and hurt gave you a certain depth and gave a certain meaning to it. Or perhaps you have felt this deep connectedness exactly at your lowest moment. Perhaps when you were sobbing intensely and suddenly you felt so, so much depth to your being that you suddenly felt so much bigger than your flesh. Or perhaps in another form of deep acute suffering you had found suddenly that your mind stopped and suddenly everything was completely silent and tranquil. Those experiences makes me want to believe that reincarnation would exist. And just in case that reincarnation would exist, makes it another reason for me to not take my own life no matter what.

- People would miss you.
Perhaps you are so involved in your misery that you find yourself unable to consider what you could mean to others. I get that. When I was at my lowest point, I also wasn’t even a bit interested in what I meant to others. That’s also why I prefer not to talk about how people around you would react if you were to take your own life. It can easily create guilt, and I do not want create guilt in you. But still consider the point. Don’t take your own life even If it’s simply because the grief that your death would cause in your family, friend and acquaintances. But don’t consider that point out of guilt, but out of compassion or love. Perhaps the guilt would give you a reason to stick around, or perhaps it would only make things worse. But don’t consider staying around out of guilt, but simply out of compassion, even if you don’t seem to feel the compassion, it may still be there. Consider your friends and family before you would do any harm to yourself. It may be an incentive for you to stay here, and that’s enough.

That all concludes my arguments. You may be depressed, anxious, or in some other kind of misery, but if you are in a lot of suffering and want to end it all, remember these points:
- You are drunk. You don’t see reality not as it is but only the negative and painful side of it
- Your pain will give you depth. You may not see it right now but I promise you if you stick through it you will start to notice.
- Likewise, your pain will create space for happiness and joy to occur later down the road, as the cycles of existence guarantees that.
- You don’t have explored all the potential there is in life. Do you really feel like you have the right to take your life before you have explored the many different practices and ideas?
- There are many different mentors, gurus and teachers who do embody the possibility of peace and joy. You could be one of them.
- Life may simply not end if your body dies. Just in case there’s more ahead, stick around. Who knows life would unfold to be a great benediction to you!
- People would miss you. Just stick around because you care about them. Don't act out of guilt, though.

You made some very strong and valid points here and have enlightened my thinking. Definitely food for thought and it tasted pretty good... thank you for this.

I have had suicidal ideation and depression since I was 5 years old. I think my sexual abuse triggered my genetic predisposition for mental illness at that point. My mom was suicidal when she was pregnant with me and severely depressed during my childhood. I never attached to her. My dad was/is an addict and I never attached to him. The dark thoughts are part of my mental illness. When I was a kid fear of going to hell kept me alive. Now I stay alive for my son. If I didn’t have him I don’t think I would still be here. As much as I love my husband I know if I was gone he would heal and keep on going. My son would never recover if I abandoned him. He is Autistic and mentally ill himself and he relies on me for everything. So that’s what keeps me here. When I became a parent I gave up the right to be selfish.

Very eye opening. Thank you.

Thank you for this.