The recent Catholic Weekly gave the readers some personal thoughts on life in our society by the priest director of a suicide prevention center.
The baby cried loudly on the plane. The tearful cry, which began with takeoff, sounded intermittently throughout the flight and continued until landing. It is a change in air pressure that gives adults' ears a popping sensation, but unbearable pain to sensitive babies.
The child whose ears hurt could not be soothed or persuaded. While the baby's parents understood everything, they had to deal with the eyes of others. All passengers had no choice but to endure the baby's crying until landing.
Such an experience was very tiring and annoying. You realize that it's a change in atmospheric pressure, something you didn't notice before. He remembered being surprised when the same sensation the baby experienced he experienced as a child.
Nevertheless, it is difficult for an adult to understand a child's pain. The pain of the weak from a strong person's point of view can be irritating. As a strong person, he's tempted to say: "It's because of his weak will - Just a little more effort..." It will be over soon, he wants to understand and be with the person but it is irritating.
Moreover, in the world as in airplanes, there is no place to escape from each other. (Of course, the world is developing more and more ways to cover your eyes and not see what is going on)."If the cause of a phenomenon is invisible to a person who observes only individual cases, the cause is outside the individual."
About 100 years ago, a scholar named Durkheim established the concept of "suicide as social murder." In coal mines, they put a canary. When toxic gases appeared in the coal mine, sensitive canaries collapsed first, and people evacuated after seeing them.
In our society, the weak are the first to collapse when difficulties arise. But the majority close their eyes easily and speak without understanding the weak's difficulties. Everyone in society suffers pain, but the degree differs greatly depending on the situation and environment.
But if many people take their own lives from the pain, it's not just an individual problem. Instead, it's a sign that some part of society is sick and broken. Just because I'm okay doesn't mean the world is problem-free. And it's the society where my family lives. It may be convenient right now to cover our ears to crying voices, but society will become sicker.
