Life isn't everything

Some people have said, and have meant it, "I wish I had never been born." Aside from how this sentiment could, in the extreme, prompt a further downward slide toward depression and even suicide, the chief problem with admitting this is the hurt it could cause the people who hear it.

Not all but most parents devote substantial portions of their lives to raising their children. They sacrifice many years of their lives to housing, clothing, feeding and training their offspring. They suppress their desires, alter than plans, abandon some of their goals--all for the good of those to whom they gave birth. The statement that life is not worth living calls into question the love--even the sanity--of those who would go to so much trouble. It implies blatant ingratitude. Friends, relatives, spouses, all who have loved the person who now wishes never to have existed, are also likely to be stricken with sadness.

Yet no one chooses to be born, and at least a few people, while thankful for the help and love that some have offered them, have wished that whoever gave them life had not done so. We often hear and sometimes say that life is a gift. It is like a gift, but for many it is broken. It often causes pain. It does not last for very long; it offers no guarantee that it will last at all. It provides us some pleasure or mild amusement, but also the awareness that our time with it is running out. Looking at life in the shadow of approaching death, striving for much of anything seems pointless.

Some people, if they had a chance--this is only a game of imagination--to choose whether they would be born again (not in the religious sense), to have a chance to start another life for themselves, even with the prospect of having a different, better set of experiences, would choose not to. Some people have cried more than laughed, known more pain than pleasure, felt more distress than relief, received more abuse than comfort. A number of these believe that oblivion is better than existence.

Many religions renounce or deprecate this life or at least regard it as a steppingstone to the next, earthly existence being but a trial whereby we win or lose our right to an eternal reward. Or it is just a period that we must endure before we get perpetual rest. Yet almost all people regard human life itself--apart from its contents--as precious and, once gained, in need of protection. Sometimes we try to make the most of a gift even after realizing that it is broken. Looked at this way, life offers us very few choices.

The only alternative to feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, healing the sick, comforting the dying, making the passage safe for all our fellow travelers in this world is making their lives less bearable. We will not win any ultimate victories, but we can do our best to minimize the suffering that inevitably pervades human existence.