A Most Desperate Cry for Help, Get Off My Lawn While I’m Shouting at Clouds, and Hope

Timbuk 3 is not wrong, necessarily; but even extreme adversity – a temporary condition – is no reason to opt for a permanent solution.

I’ve been revisiting this piece for several weeks, now. Writing, and re-writing it – for anyone who anticipates reading my essays, I hope this one, and the one to follow in another week, or so (part two), will have been worth the wait.

Several weeks ago now, one of my favourite writers on Substack published the following essay:

The Human Animal

A cry for help
The piece centers on a woman who, for reasons that seem perfectly rational to her, plans on voluntarily ending her life.¹ 

Ter Beek, who lives in a little Dutch town near the German border, once had ambitions to become a psychiatrist, but she was never able to muster the will to finish school or start a career. She said she was hobbled by her depression and autism and borderline personality disorder. Now she was tired of living—despite, she said, being in love with her boyfriend, a 40-year-old IT programmer, and living in a nice house with their two cats. 

She recalled her psychiatrist telling her that they had tried everything, that ‘there’s nothing more we can do for you. It’s never gonna get any better.’

One of the first questions that occurred to me was: “What right does the psychiatrist have making such a judgement?” Followed immediately by: “Why would it be communicated to the patient in that manner?” and, “Isn’t that more than a little above his/her pay grade?” In any event, “‘...It’s never gonna get any better.’” strikes me as the height of arrogance. 

It sounds like she has had more than her share of adversity thus far, and who among us can say that were we in similar circumstances, wouldn’t feel the same way? Nonetheless, every one of us, unless we are of the one percent and born into a life of privilege like one of the Rothschilds, Gettys, or of the House of Saud, has had to contend with adversity, ourselves. 

For some of us, the enormity of it seems insurmountable, and whatever form the adversity takes, to that individual it is perceived to be an existential threat. There’s a difference, however, in feeling that way because of how one perceives the current condition, and the knowledge that the current condition is just that, no matter how persistent. Acknowledgement of that fact gives rise to faith, and faith to hope that it, and its effects, are temporary.

Yet, her own words would indicate that her claim of being tired of living is not entirely true: “...despite, she said, being in love with her boyfriend, a 40-year-old IT programmer, and living in a nice house with their two cats.”

There’s no point in unboxing the incongruity of the two sentiments, as their self-contradiction is apparent. Mental illness aside, who wants to end her own life if one is in love with her mate? 

Does she mean to express that given her depression, autism, and borderline personality disorder; life, for her, is extremely difficult? Okay, granted – but again, for whom is it not? The fact that life is difficult is no excuse to give up and end it. 

Get off my lawn…
Every generation until the Millennials has had to cope with the fact that life that was difficult in one way or another. Everyone learned (usually, early on – one of the first lessons common to all) that life was not fair – it rarely, if ever, went according to plan. It required hard work, perseverance, persistence; and for the sake of their children, a resolve to leave their current place in society better than what they assumed from their forbears. 

Time was when knowing one’s place in the much larger whole – not in terms of caste, or class immobility – was an ethos common to almost everyone. It was an unconscious acceptance of the reality that one’s sphere of influence was likely limited to one’s own relationships like family, friends, and neighbours.

This ethos facilitated the establishment of the traditional family as the foundation and building block of western society – hence the husband (as the head of the household) made his wife the top priority, then his kids. In this way, husbands fulfilled their spiritual and moral obligation to love their wives as Christ loved the church, lead their families, and model for their son(s) how to be a man, a husband, a father; and for their daughter(s), the kind of man they ought to marry.

All of this at the expense of his own personal aspirations and dreams that might have sought to replace the call to put his family, first. For this reason, folks got up and went to work every morning, regardless of how they felt, because there were others depending on them, and it made for a kind of built-in humility. Because there just wasn’t opportunity for inwardly focused navel gazing, no one was so conceited, or so arrogant as to believe that they not only could, but had an obligation to “change the world” at large on a macro scale. Yet, they did just that by each making their own worlds better.

It can be argued that then, as now, we were no less self-centered, and it is a valid argument. It should be pointed out, however, the difference is that then, for much of one’s life, one’s self was devoted to others – mainly, one’s family. Now, one’s self is devoted to selfish interest (not self-interest), seeking ease and comfort for one’s self first, above all else. 

Am I painting with an extremely broad brush, here? Yes, I am – to make a point – and while human nature has not changed, it does respond to, and is temporarily modified, by external forces acting upon it.

Returning to Ms. Ter Beek’s plight, those like her who suffer from depression in varying degrees and who are also all too aware of it, along with those who are also sympathetic to them will immediately claim that it isn’t that easy – that it isn’t just a matter of changing one’s mind. They are correct – it isn’t easy – the more complications, the more difficult it is to overcome.

It is that simple, though. Medication may help, but more than likely, it will not.

Lest anyone hold my view as unrealistic, or even that of a Polly Anna, the aforementioned facts are not offered without acknowledging that overcoming such adversity is extraordinarily difficult. In fact, the enormity of it can only appear to be all but impossible. How could it not be? Yet, it is not.

Shouting at clouds…
Part of the larger problem, as I see it, is that for some reason, instead of being encouraged to cope with situations and circumstances that are unpleasant or difficult, accommodations have been made for such shrinking violets.

Making accommodations for one who is clearly physically disabled is only reasonable. Making accommodations for someone who merely manic, excessively emotional, vegetarian or vegan, willfully triggered by microaggressions (whatever the hell those are), is madness. 

There is a difference between those who are unable to adapt, and those who simply refuse to. From politically correct speech to meaningless language to mental illness to sexual deviance – what once was utter nonsense has become the norm in its own right.

In the case of sexual deviance, what was once shameful and something to be kept to one’s self is now out in the open and to be celebrated – even if one’s personal ethics don’t support the abomination of the moment: homosexuality, pedophilia, polyamory and any other “substitute” for the institution of marriage between one woman and one man. Our society, in its depraved state, has forced everyone else to adapt to the freaks.

Had we not begun to allow for these deviations, we would have had no choice but to learn to tolerate views and opinions we don’t like; legal immigrants would have had no choice but to learn to speak, read, and write English – and when it became clear that one was simply refusing to do so, it would have been a dead give-away that they were here illegally, and one phone call to INS would have meant immediate deportation. If one’s libido was stimulated by anything other than the opposite sex, that was something they would have had to manage on their own.

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Regarding the matter of suicide, what occurs to me is this:

There is nothing to prevent anyone so inclined to end his/her own life.

In responses to this topic and others similar in other publications on Substack, once one has crossed that Rubicon and made the decision, there is almost no reversing it. I know that of which I speak, having come this close.² At the end of the day, it is a most permanent solution to what is a temporary problem, by any standard.

The real issue here is the immorality of the argument in favour of state-sanctioned, physician-assisted suicide. It is an immoral argument not because one who is so suffering wishes to end his/her life, and not because said sufferer desires the state’s blessing to do so – rather, it is an immoral argument because in codifying the option into law, said sufferer is involving another. I am judging the argument to be immoral based on the sixth commandment:³

‘You shall not murder.’
– Exodus 20:13

Not much, if any, nuance there.

Given that most of the laws in the US, if not the western world are modeled on Judeo-Christian ethics, a judgement that such a law is, in fact, immoral is done so on pretty good authority. I can only conclude that the only reason one would involve another is that the one suffering wishes to escape most of the accountability for the act, if not absolve themselves entirely. 

To further complicate matters, when that second party is a medical authority, not only is that physician an accessory to the crime of homicide, he/or she is directly and intentionally violating what I understand to be a foundational principle of the Hippocratic oath:⁴ 

‘Primum non nocere’ or, ‘First, do no harm’

This is a slippery slope – we were warned of this forty-five years ago now, by the late Francis Shaeffer, Ph.D., and C. Everett Koop, M.D., in the book and accompanying film series, Whatever Happened to the Human Race?

One of the questions that occurred to me which I did not mention above is, “Why would the psychiatrist completely take away her hope, like that?”

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Sadly, Zoraya Ter Beek died at 1:25pm, local time, on Wednesday, May 29, 2024. Per The Free Press account:⁵

Even as a child, Zoraya ter Beek had a persistent wish to die. Growing up in the quaint Dutch town of Oldenzaal, she never felt as if she fit in.

It is tragic that she never received the kind of help she desperately needed.

I happen to agree with the late Hal Lindsey:

Man can live about forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight minutes without air...but only for one second without hope.

Hope
For the rest of us, and any who may be suffering similar to Ms. Ter Beek, there is help.

There is hope.

Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.

Thank you, dear reader, for your indulgence.

Until next time…

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1. ‘I’m 28. And I’m Scheduled to Die in May.’

2. I’ll make reference to that very dark time, but there will be no essay dedicated to that chapter, and what brought me back from the brink. Suffice it to praise God for the people He used to intervene.

3. https://www.bible.com/bible/111/EXO.20.13

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath

5. She Was 29. And Doctors Helped Her Die.