Holding On: SSHM Prologue (by Rylie Babcock, Section #1)

 

    “Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” 

     Even if you haven’t seen the movie, you’ve heard this quote. Forrest Gump is about a man who isn’t really the brightest, and who spent his childhood wearing leg braces to correct his crooked spine while running from bullies. Despite these challenges, and his experiencing the horrors of the Vietnam War, Forrest maintains an overall optimistic view about life and positively impacts those around him. The future, the unknown, the possibilities were fascinating and encouraging to him. Like with a chocolate box, you will have good things and bad things, favorites and least favorites, excitements and disappointments. There may be things you didn’t like as a child but now love, and things you loved as a child but now, they aren’t really your taste. Each box is different and unique.

     Hopefully your box of chocolate is a little more uplifting than the one pictured above. Most other cartoons from the internet about this quote were also fairly depressing, which is interesting since it was spoken by a very positive character in a classic feel-good movie. Then again, life is hard–hard for most, even harder for many. With all the suffering we see on the news, in our own country and those next door and those far away, it can be difficult to feel anything towards life or to find any meaning in it at all. Why open the box to begin with? What if I don’t like any of the chocolates? What if after eating them I feel worse than I do now? Maybe it’s better to just throw the whole box in the trash and call it a day. I can’t control what is in the box, but I can choose to get rid of it. That choice has a certain, tangible outcome, unlike the choice of opening the box.       

    These are questions that countless people are wrestling with today, and that countless more have wrestled with throughout history. We’ve already discussed in class William James’ question of “Is life worth living?” which drove much of his philosophy and writings, and was the topic of an address he gave at Harvard in 1895. We’ve also read in great detail about his answer, “Maybe,” and that he believed hope was defined by “willingness to live on a chance.” (SSHM, pp. 174) Maybe life is worth living. I don’t have to open the chocolate box right now, but I also don’t have to throw it away either. I can just sit with it and think. 

     This idea is reflected in Jennifer Michael Hecht’s book Stay: A History of Suicide and Philosophies against It, which was mentioned in an earlier blogpost from Dr. Oliver. Hecht discusses different approaches to the topic of suicide, from historical, modern, secular, religious, and philosophical perspectives. Similar to Kaag biking upon the scene of Stephen Rose’s death on February 6, 2014 and feeling compelled to write a book for the sick and weary, Hecht was driven to write this book by her personal losses. Two of her very close friends committed suicide, just a couple years apart. In the preface, Hecht writes that life “isn’t too hard to bear, it’s only almost too hard to bear,” (Stay, pp. x) and describes that her purpose in this book is to throw her readers a rope, a lifeline, to cling to for the time being. Take things one day at a time. Wake up every day and choose to live for at least that day; once the decision to stay has been made, “anything may happen.” (Stay, pp. 234) 

      Hecht examines suicide throughout history by tell the stories of various figures, such as Socrates and Cleopatra. She begins with the story of Lucretia, a Roman noblewoman who committed suicide to “preserve her honor” in a sense; her story became a pillar of Roman virtue. There’s a lot to unpack there regarding victim-blaming and an obsession with female chastity, which I’m not going to tackle in this blogpost. Mainly, I wanted to just quickly mention a super cool woman, the Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi, who painted Lucretia four different times, as well as other women from history and the Bible, including Judith slaying Holofernes. Here’s one of the Lucretia paintings below.

   

To return to the main topic of whether life is worth it, one takeaway from the experiences of Kaag and Hecht and many others is that one of the greatest flaws of the human focus may be our tendency to not recognize how precious something is until we’ve lost it. We don’t realize how meaningful life is until we lose it, we don’t think of reaching out to someone and expressing our love and appreciation until it’s too late. Many times it takes an unforeseen, tragic loss or a frightening, near death experience to shake us awake to what’s really important. After Rose’s death, his family started a foundation, the Steve Fund, that provides mental health resources for underprivileged students. Another organization I’ve stumbled across while researching for my presentation/blogpost is Reasons to Stay, which is a suicide prevention project that posts anonymous letters, from strangers to strangers, encouraging the reader to keep going, to not give up, to stay. This project was started by Ben West and his family after he lost his little brother to suicide. Like Kaag and Hecht, West wants to offer a lifeline to those who may be struggling and show that people care, that there are reasons to stay. 

     Sometimes those reasons can be hard to find. 100 Reasons to Keep on Living lists, well, one hundred reasons to keep living, but the interesting thing about this article is that while some of the reasons are larger, like milestones of graduation, marriage, and first child, many of them are minor–the way rain sounds when it hits the roof, cookies that are still warm from the oven, the feeling of sunlight on your face. These little experiences are easy and attainable things to look forward to, and noticing them helps us to slow down and realize that each day is a gift. Each little moment builds on the next to form a whole lifetime. 

      James’ advice to “Be not afraid of life” (SSHM, pp. 5) is still relevant to our age. Life is about growing, and growth often comes from uncomfortable situations and messy mistakes. You’re going to fail, you’re going to be wrong, you’re going to mess up, but that doesn’t mean that you’re a failure and your life has no meaning. Life is a constant learning experience because all of us are living for the first time. There are so many things to try, so many places to see, so many people to meet, but we will never get to try or see or meet any of them unless we stick around long enough to do so.