I pick up news of what is going on outside of Lee’s head by watching the news through her eyes. It seems there has a been two suicides by humans who appeared to be enjoying their life and had every reason to live, Fashion Designer Kate Spade and travel writer and chef Anthony Bourdain.
I am living in the brain of a ‘creative’ as the industry calls them and I have also delved into past memories in Lee’s brain. She has a place in her brain where she keeps the memory of the suicide of Alexander McQueen, one of the designers Lee most admired. The news that even her fellow kiwis, New Zealanders, have an increasing rate of suicide is sad but not surprising to her. She is not at all surprised by the conscious effort to let go of it all and ‘go to sleep’. She is not surprised by the more common form of ‘going to sleep’, suicide by drugs.
Lee is asked, ‘Why do they do it?’
She is one of ‘them’, though not as well known or under nearly the pressure.
Why does anyone do it?
I can only tell you what I have picked up in Lee’s thought patterns.
Lee thinks human’s choose death when the pain of living outweighs the joy. Do Creatives do it more often? She does not know but suspects so.
‘Creatives’ are what they do. There is no barrier between them and their art. To be true artists, be they actors, dancers, painters or writers, they must be able to act on instinct and live fully in the moment. They must be able to brush the air with a stroke of a limb, or brush a canvas with the flourish of a paint brush, or truly feel the story of another person.
Does this generation feel more entitled to happiness? Does this generation not have the fortitude of those before them? Lee thinks each generation is similar. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has existed for as long as humans have walked the earth. In the past, some religions have pressured their constituents to stay alive and breed with a threat of a description of ‘hell’ so dire the person holds on out of fear. Is this actually a good way of stopping a human from choosing a long term solution for a possibly short term problem? It worked! It no longer works as the belief in hell has waned.
Those that did not suicide, died in battle, of disease or hard use. Will wars, the longest running group activity of humans after eating, ever stop? A battle that raises the heat of the blood and the belief in something worth dying for, is a fast and honorable suicide. Humans live and die…. Fast or slow, by accident, illness or intent.
Lee lives fully each day and is deeply sad when she is sad. When she was sad, her mother would tell her to have a warm bath and a cup of hot chocolate and go to bed. Tomorrow is a new day.
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