The absolutism of youth

I debated calling this post "But you have so much to live for!" It is still possible that would have been a better title, but "the absolutism of youth" picks up a phrase I used in a post a couple days ago. Mostly I just want to capture an idea I have had for some years, so it is recorded somewhere.

Why do the young commit suicide? From the perspective of those of us who are no longer young, it looks foolish: they are throwing away decades of future opportunity, and there is every likelihood that somewhere in those decades the thing that is upsetting them so badly will resolve itself in some other way. So it just looks inexplicable.

The thing is, that's not what it looks like from the inside. When you are young, the choices that you can see look very stark. And frequently all the available options look pretty bad. When you try to take an inventory of what you have inside yourself, what tools you have to confront a threatening and terrible world, it's a pretty bleak and empty picture. The tool chest doesn't have a lot in it. The room you live in, when you retreat deep inside yourself, is shabby and spare. There's not much furniture, and the carpet shows wear and holes.

And as a result, suicide doesn't look nearly as irrational as it does to those of us who are older. We are accustomed to think of the opportunities lost as worth something, and so we look at the suicide of the young as an incredible waste. But the young themselves have no way to assess what these hypothetical -- or perhaps imaginary, fictitious, fantastical -- opportunities are worth, so they tally them up as worth nothing. Zero. When they try to evaluate the worth of what really is there, that they might be throwing away, it's easy for them to overlook assets (I mean spiritual or psychological or emotional assets) that they have never had to imagine life without; it is easy to treat those as just part of the wallpaper. And so again, it is easy to come out with a much smaller, paltrier inventory than an older person would sum up. And if are in great pain, and all you have to give up to get out of that great pain is a handful of pocket change, ... what the hell? Why not throw it away and be done?

Of course, the old kill themselves too. Minutes before I started typing this, I googled the question how suicide statistics vary across age groups, and found (for example) this article which states that, "In general, the suicide rate increases with age," although it then goes on to concede that there is "a major spike in adolescents and young adults." But my own recollection from my days as a teenager or an undergraduate or a graduate student is that life felt like it had less ballast than it does today (in my late fifties). Maybe it is just that back then my own depression was undiagnosed and I wasn't taking antidepressants. Maybe the whole experience is chemical. But it feels like ballast. And back then my life did feel much lighter and flimsier, much sparer and emptier, much cheaper and easier to imagine throwing away without losing much. I never did it -- I'm afraid of pain, and I often drag my feet before taking any big steps; so then I'd go to bed and wake up feeling less dismal the next day.

In other words, the very thing that makes the old so alarmed when they see they young kill themselves -- that they have their whole future in front of them -- is exactly what makes it (comparatively) easier. Nobody can feel the future. It is purely abstract. And so if all the value that gives substance and meaning to your life is in the future, that's the same as saying that you have none of it in your hands to draw on right now. It's like when you say, "This stock has tremendous growth potential," and what you mean is "It's selling for a penny a share so there's nowhere to go but up." Having so much (in the future) to live for is all very well, but it is only after you have done some of that living, after you have converted some of that potential into actuality (for better or worse), that you can really feel like you have something to lose.