Response #10, edited for grammar:

Date: 2003-09-25, 11:32AM

If you are willing to die, then you are willing to do the unimaginable. If you are willing to do the unimaginable, then why not sell everything, take your savings, and go to the place in the world that you think is the most beautiful. Look around. If your job makes you unhappy, quit it. Don't worry about getting something first. Just quit. It’s amazing what that can do for your spirits.

I just got back from a year of travel. It is a beautiful, big world out there with things to see and amazing people that are waiting to meet you. There are people who have nothing, who manage to face the day with courage and dignity everyday. Meet them. It will change you.

My point - if you are willing to die, then you are willing to leave. Go forth and seek and find. You matter. Really. Don't make a terrible mistake.

Some similar themes to previous responses, one being the suggestion to go proactively live in a different way to see if that changes your view. Maybe it will work, it depends on the person. I guess it doesn't hurt to suggest it. But it won't work on a suicide who either proactively wants to die or proactively not live. If the decision is made, this kind of response is irrelevant.

There’s also that curious logic of “if you’re willing to die, then you’re willing to blah, blah, blah”. Suicides tend to experience a mental tunnel vision, and being willing to die means . . . nothing else, they’re willing to die.

This response also contains the common mistake of telling a suicide that there are people who are worse off, and since those people can face it and handle it, so should he or she. I guess that’s supposed to guilt the suicide out of doing it, but it tends to make them feel worse. Now they feel like wimps and losers, too, so why shouldn’t they do it?

This response comes across like he knows something, when he really knows nothing about this person. Why is killing himself an unqualified “terrible mistake”? How does he know continuing living would not be a terrible mistake? He says it like it’s a fact.

If he really thinks it’s a fact, it’s only his own fact, not necessarily the suicide’s, it certainly wouldn’t be a fact to me. Fact: if I commit suicide, it would not be a mistake. If he tells me my fact is wrong, I tell him his fact is wrong. Who are we to dictate facts to each other?

Also, "Meet them. It will change you." Fuck you, condescending wank. Would my travel C.V. shut you up?