When Life doesn’t seem to be Worth Living

Since I’m not a professional counselor, I can probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of people I’ve talked to who were actively thinking about killing themselves. On the other hand, hardly a month goes by when I don’t have a serious conversation with someone who really can’t get very excited about being alive.

If Henry David Thoreau’s observation that “most people live lives of quiet desperation” is accurate, then that may explain why I have so many of these conversations.

It’s relatively easy to understand why some people may feel this way.

• They feel like they are serving a life sentence in a prison created by their disabilities.
• They maybe lonely – and not always because they didn’t reach out to people. It’s amazing how many people simply lose all their friends and relatives and are literally the “last leaf” on what was once a very fruitful tree.
• They may be in considerable physical or emotional pain.
• They may have failed at what they considered their most important life task so much that there is little hope of redeeming their lives.
• They may be facing death anyway, and getting it over with quickly may be more appealing than prolonging the process.

Some of these people may suffer from depression, but the truth is that the objective circumstances of many lives really are depressing.

Before you decide to jump off a bridge just from reading this, let me say that the good news is that many people have worked through these kinds of situations and have much to teach us.

One of them, believe it or not, was the Apostle Paul. He spent the last few months of his life – maybe up to two years – under house arrest in Rome. If the chronology of his letters goes the way most scholars think, Paul enjoyed many of the comforts of modern day politicians who are sent to federal prison for defrauding the public of millions of dollars. The difference is that Paul hadn’t done anything wrong and he had to pay for his incarceration out of his own pocket. But Paul enjoyed many visitors and a wide correspondence, at first.

The New Testament says nothing about Paul’s death, but tradition says that he was beheaded by order of the Emperor. At any rate, it looks like, as time ran out – so did Paul’s friends.

Paul’s letter to the Philippians was almost certainly written during this period of imprisonment – maybe when the executioner’s shadow was hanging over him. The tone of most of the letter is pretty joyful, but at the beginning the joy seems a little forced. Paul is experiencing all of the things I listed above that make people, if not suicidal, at least willing to consider the advantages of dying. This may be especially true of people who actually believe in life after death.

Paul says, “For me, living is Christ and dying is gain”.

He goes on to weigh – on the one hand – the advantages of dying “to be with Christ” or to hang on to life because he might still be of some use to someone out there, and he finally concludes that the latter is reason enough to go on living.

What I find helpful in this inner conflict that Paul shares with us is that it uncovers a conflict that many of us have at some time in our lives. It comes down to, “What am I living for?” or “What is the meaning of life in general – and of mine in particular?”

I just read a thoughtful column by Todd May, a professor of Philosophy that wrestles with this question from a secular standpoint.

Dr. May points out that the “meaning” secular society offers us generally boils down to whether we are good consumers or good investors. But, he isn’t sure that a eulogy that says,  “She always found the best bargains” or “He made a fistful of money” is really the description of a well-lived life.  He is not willing to say it’s God who gives life meaning – and I’m OK with that, because too often the pious answers are just intellectual and spiritual laziness.

He also recognizes that “meaningfulness” does not necessarily mean “happiness” or “fulfillment”.   It has to do with whether our life story, as we reflect on it, means anything. Charles Dickens probably comes closest to what he means by “meaningfulness” when he has David Copperfield begin his story by wondering, “Whether I shall be the hero of my own life or whether that station will be held by someone else.”

I’d like to suggest that Paul offers us a clue to meaningfulness that some of the wisest people I know – or know of – have also discovered for themselves.

A friend of mine once told me that his therapist had said, “If you can’t say ‘no’, you can’t say ‘yes’”.

Maybe this feeling that can sneak up on us – the question about whether life is worth living and whether we even want to go on – is a way to see that life is not non-negotiable. We are not sentenced to life. Paul certainly wasn’t. Whether you buy his conviction that there is a life after death – and that whatever comes next is good – or not, you have to admire his final “yes” to life. He is clearly considering the other alternative – and he rejects it – not because he is afraid to die, but because other people need him to live – even if they can’t communicate with him, they somehow need to know he is there and he is acting courageously.