So Much More than You Really Know

Jennifer Michael Hecht in conversation with Krista Tippett, "Hope for Our Future Selves," On Being, March 27, 2014:

It’s an extreme reaction, but lots of people die after a suicide. They come in groups...

But don’t ever forget the flipside, which is your staying alive means so much more than you really know or that anyone is aware of at this moment. We’re in it together in this profound way, and you can take some strength from that. For me, that’s been very important...My two arguments that you owe it to other people and that you owe it to your future self, are both about looking at what the individual means. 

Because when you look at a person within a group, and all the trends we follow: the clothes, the car, the not-car —all these trends that we follow, you realize the extent to which we’re enmeshed. And when you look at yourself and realize that you have fallen in and out of love with the same person, you have fought with friends, thinking you’ll never speak to them again, and you love them again...

We have different moods that profoundly change our outlook, and it’s not right to let your worst one murder all the others.

See also: Hecht, J. M. (2013). Stay: A history of suicide and the philosophies against it. New Haven: Yale University Press