Anyway, once one theorizes that given the knowledge of what their life would hold and the decision whether or not to live it, they would choose a complete lack of experience to what they see as a majority of negative experiences, the question of whether, then, they would be better off terminating all experiences rather than continue risking more and more negative ones can completely consume the mind. Whether there is any actual truth value to their perceptions (or any of our perceptions for that matter) doesn’t strike me as an important factor when the experience is so strongly emotional and personal.

There is a tendency in some people to reject the idea that death could be preferable to life, and they dismiss the possibility that anyone not in agonizing pain from a terminal disease could be justified in believing this. The sentiment is that those desperately hopeless people must be weak, mentally ill, and /or their belief is the result of flawed thinking for which the thinker can be held responsible. All I know is, after attempting to challenge every single thought that occurred to me in the course of contemplating suicide, I found the experience to be a deeply philosophical one that in fact compelled me to explore existentialism and led me to this very book. These thoughts can make someone feel incredibly isolated, and reading this gave me an incredible sense of relief merely by existing as evidence that my fears and anxiety were shared by others- people who *did* manage to lead lives I, as an observer/outsider but someone who values empathy, can only appraise as meaningful. Even if I reduce my evaluation to the undeniable fact that “this helped me”, that gives me hope that I have been unable find in any other discipline. Admittedly, I have a very difficult time separating philosophy and psychology, but I also am not sure they can be evaluated both separately *and* completely. When I referred to our perceptions earlier, I had the nagging thought that this seems to be a question of mental health, because there are people who perceive the world in such a way that the rest of the world collectively agrees they are mistaken (I am painfully aware of the implications of/problems with this statement :)), but when ideas are less obviously logically flawed and instead seem fuzzy and subjective, this is where I can’t yet separate philosophy and psychology.

~Ali Raza
One Love ORG