"Come to me, all ye that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." (Matthew. XI. 28)

.....One of the comments on yesterday's posting about suicide brought up the of the question about the motivation of those souls with suicidal thoughts, and whether or not they consider the effect their death will have on family and friends who love them.  Of course grieving will follow any death of a loved one, but in my own experience with suicidal thoughts, those of my own, and those of others I've known, there is no consideration of the effect on others; just the closure of one's pain--severe as it is--mentally or physically.

.....I must have read "Hamlet"  about 100 times, silently and aloud both to myself and to my English classes over the years, and I always wondered about his motivation for committing suicide.  There is no question that he is seriously committed to it--two soliloquies document that.  But I always thought it was a weak excuse.  Obviously, he was in mourning over his father's death, and the over-hasty, incestuous marriage of his mother to his father's brother, Claudius.  (Yes, marriage back then to a husband's brother was considered to be incest).  However much Hamlet thought of the incest, he did not appear to be concerned so much to it as he is to the other aforementioned motives for his suicidal thoughts. He says "...how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world."  By "unprofitable" I don't believe he meant  his losses in the stock market as much as he means his happiness.  And in another moment he says, "...whether in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles..."  Nowhere does Shakespeare mention the nature of Hamlets's "outrageous fortune", and nowhere does he list this "sea of troubles".  To me, at least, it seems more like a lake of troubles.  But  Hamlet never appears concerned about the effect his death would have on Ophelia, his love, or his mother, or on Denmark for that matter.

.....I believe JRs comment has a lot of merit, and I am not saying that there is no truth to what he claims.  Surely, there must be those who spare death to themselves because of concern about the effect it would have on others.  I'm simply saying that in my experience those who do actually kill themselves have done so without any thoughts regarding the grief they will cause.  Too much unrelenting, overwhelming pain.