Last week I heard this news that a male student from CSB offed himself by jumping from a building. Weeks before this, another CSB student, a Korean girl, killed herself also by jumping from a building.
I learned on Tuesday that the guy who committed suicide is someone that I know. But we're not close. I'm not even sure if he knows me. But you know, when you hear of someone dying, it might not have an effect on you if you don't know the person. But if you do know the person, even if you're not of kin or you don't share some close-ness or a special bond or whatever, in a way you get affected. I don't know with others but it certainly does so for me. Last last summer our next-door neighbor passed away and I was affected but I didn't feel bereaved. It's just something I can't explain. When I heard the news, I felt sad in a way.
So I thought about suicide, but not doing it of course!
SUICIDE.
According to Wikipedia, Views on suicide have been influenced by cultural views on existential themes such as religion, honor, and the meaning of life. Most Western and Asian religions—the Abrahamic religions, Buddhism, Hinduism—consider suicide a dishonorable act; in the West it was regarded as a serious crime and offense against God due to religious belief in the sanctity of life.
They say that when your life ended through suicide, you will go straight to hell. No judgement, no anything.
Of course we all know the usual reasons for suicide: depression, stress, mental disorders etc.
This dude, Emile Durkheim developed a theory about it. According to him, The rapid change in society due to increasing division of labor thus produces a state of confusion with regard to norms and increasing impersonality in social life, leading eventually to relative normlessness, i.e. the breakdown of social norms regulating behavior; Durkheim labels this state anomie. From a state of anomie come all forms of deviant behavior, most notably suicide.
So it must be that those suicidal people were deeply affected with the continuous changes in society that they lost their values, suffered from some kind of "social disorder" and it eventually led to suicide. That is my understanding of the theory.

But...anywaaaaaaaaaaaaay....
I'm gonna stop referring to the things (and the people) I learned in my Sociology class. People might start thinking I'm smart (well I'm not).
For me, we each have our own views. We see life in different perspectives. That's why we have pessimists and optimists.
For instance, me and my family are in deep shit right now. Ok, I'm exaggerating. But we're having a major problem right now. And I'm constantly under pressure and stress because of studying. Things are changing fast around me that I'm constantly struggling to keep up. There are times when I feel lonely and hopeless, but I didn't think of slitting my wrists or overdosing on pills. And it's most likely that their problems are nothing compared to my situation right now.
But they chose to end it all.
Maybe suicidal people are pessimists, only worst. Maybe, for them, Life is a struggle and its end is dark, as suggested in the lyrics of the Anglo-Saxon in their lais.
Maybe for them, life is not a challenge, and surrendering is the best thing to do. Yes, you can say that they're weak. But it's the way they view life.
But we can't blame them. They're under pressure. Their misery is stronger than their determination to stay alive and keep on fighting.
It might seem that I understand suicidal people. But all of those are just what I think. I mean, I'm not an academic, it's just my understanding of them.

But I was just thinking (since I still have a Dead Poets Society hang-over),
what if those people who committed suicide stood on desks and tried to see the world in a different way and their problems on a different light, would they have gone on a little bit longer...or would they haven't gone on at all?