Never Give Up! No Suicide Please! There's Always Another Day

I've had many occasions to be grateful that I've studied some philosophy and watched a lot of movies. Because whenever I'm having a bad, bad, really bad day, I remember a speck of philosophy and one line from one little movie. Both little specks are about how you just need to get through that day.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), the existentialist German philosopher, had attained great success in his mid-twenties, being named head of the Philosophy Department at the University of Basel. But the poor guy had health problems and lost his mind eventually, imagining that he had enormous earthly powers and envisioning vast conspiracies against him. He lived out his life with his mother and sister, dying of stroke and pneumonia in 1900. He may not have been the cheeriest soul. But he obviously had a sense of humor. Out of his multitudes of writing, everyone remembers his idiotic "God is Dead." But I have more occasion to remember this speck: “The thought of suicide is a powerful solace: by means of it one gets through many a bad night” That is really funny! Thinking of suicide is a solace and a good way to get through the night. Just don't act on it! This too will pass.

In the movie "Crimes of the Heart" (1986), three sisters (Jessica Lange, Diane Keaton, and Sissy Spacek) come together because the Sissy Spacek character just shot her husband and needs some family support. The Diane Keaton character, kind of prissy, has never married and has always taken care of their grandfather. While the sisters, who haven't been together in a long time, hash over old family history, they talk about the shame brought on the family by their mother's suicide many years ago when she stuck her head in the gas oven. Obviously it's had an impact on all of their lives, and they variously blame her or defend her according to their personalities. Jessica Lange's character, the black-leather jacketed, chain-smoking one who's been around the block, finally says languidly about the suicide: "Look. Mamma was just having a really bad day."

Those two specks have sustained me. I haven't seen the movie in 20 years and don't intend to, but I think my memory serves me well. I always loved this idea that life goes on, and you may as well go on too, because no matter how bad it seems, no matter how horrendous this day is, the tide will turn. There will be another day. Your number will be up eventually, but don't rush it.

And just for the record, I'm actually having a very good day. I'm just discouraged about the presidential campaign, but believe me, as my father said when when Jimmy Carter got elected (or was it Bill Clinton?), "Ah well,we'll get through it."