<story><title>Some Practical Thoughts on Suicide</title><url>http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/05/06/how-to-commit-suicide/?utm_content=buffer7da00&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter.com&amp;utm_campaign=buffer</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>eastbayjake</author><text>In January, a student from my alma mater flew all the way across the country to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. I ended up reading a &lt;i&gt;New Yorker&lt;/i&gt; article from 2003[1] about Golden Gate jumpers and this anecdote stopped me:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Motto had a patient who committed suicide from the Golden Gate in 1963, but the jump that affected him most occurred in the seventies. “I went to this guy’s apartment afterward with the assistant medical examiner,” he told me. “The guy was in his thirties, lived alone, pretty bare apartment. He’d written a note and left it on his bureau. It said, ‘I’m going to walk to the bridge. If one person smiles at me on the way, I will not jump.’”&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;He jumped. And ever since I read that, I&amp;#x27;ve made it a personal mission to smile at everyone I pass on the sidewalk every day. Not only does suicide have unknowable impacts on all of the people around you, but even your most insignificant actions could have an enormous impact on the people around you. Be good to others -- you never know how much it might mean to them.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.newyorker.com&amp;#x2F;magazine&amp;#x2F;2003&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;13&amp;#x2F;jumpers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.newyorker.com&amp;#x2F;magazine&amp;#x2F;2003&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;13&amp;#x2F;jumpers&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Some Practical Thoughts on Suicide</title><url>http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/05/06/how-to-commit-suicide/?utm_content=buffer7da00&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter.com&amp;utm_campaign=buffer</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>rcpt</author><text>The best quote on this topic that I know of is terrifying:&lt;p&gt;The so-called &amp;#x27;psychotically depressed&amp;#x27; person who tries to kill herself doesn&amp;#x27;t do so out of quote &amp;#x27;hopelessness&amp;#x27; or any abstract
conviction that life&amp;#x27;s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in
whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling
from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out
the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire&amp;#x27;s flames: when the flames get
close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It&amp;#x27;s not desiring the fall; it&amp;#x27;s terror of the flames.
And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling &amp;#x27;Don&amp;#x27;t!&amp;#x27; and &amp;#x27;Hang on!&amp;#x27;, can understand the jump. Not really. You&amp;#x27;d
have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.&lt;p&gt;-David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest</text></comment>