FOX SAID TODAY (SUNDAY) THAT 17 VETERANS KILL THEMSELVES EVERY DAY.
…I’m not a veteran. I’m 4F, for those who remember, because I’m cross-eyed and blind in my left eye. They’d never take me. But that fact about suicide, which was later in the same episode shown to be far too LOW an estimate, especially since Reserve and National Guard members kill themselves at even higher rates, was just a bit too much for me, and I’ll confess, I started to cry, as happens sometimes these days. I’m sorry, so sorry, my brothers and my sisters.
…The father of one such veteran said, “There are plenty of resources out there,” and the mother said “He had a hard time adapting to making his own decisions about what to do every day instead of just being told.” Can’t argue with that.
…But veterans and active members don’t need “resources.” They need LOVE, the same as ALL of us need it. Ironically, they HAD that experience of PEER love, perhaps for the first time, while on active deployment, because of the “friends” in their unit. Translation: “Friends” means “Lovers.” NOT sexual or romantic lovers. Of course not. Can no one else be a lover?
…Once, long ago perhaps in our history, we understood that a “friend” is someone who loves you, and whom you love too. Maybe that’s easier to both understand and to realize in a true tribe, or a true tribe culture. A military unit is a tribe. Of course we murder the tribe immediately after discharge.
…I would estimate that this “discharge” from tribe is especially poignant and painful for the young males, who are then thrust full speed back into the brutal reality of also being on the bottom of the estrus system hierarchy, and who thus experience that lack of love being set on fire by the additional anguish of a hopeless sex drive as well, a sex drive which, for the male, is linked with love in a way I don’t think females understand very accurately. (I’ve written about that separately in my blog, and elsewhere here on Facebook, and why the reproductive drives are really so completely different in the two genders, something I believe is not yet understood well enough and thus becomes a deep human tragedy.)
…However, female vets and actives kill themselves at high rates too. In fact, in the general population, I’ve heard that women try to kill themselves twice as often as we men do, but they fail so much more often, that males end up having a higher SUCCESSFUL suicide rate. I’d like to unpack those facts but don’t want to do so here. For now, let me just say that, in my opinion, both males and females, in fact ALL human beings, DESPERATELY NEED LOVE as a biological reality, even before we come to the “spiritual,” whatever that is.
…OK, yes, there may be multiple reasons for depression, anxiety, terrible suffering and suicide, but I think we CAN say wisely that lack of love doesn’t help. I suspect that people don’t kill themselves as often, regardless of what may be likely to go on in the “chemistry” of their brain, when they are bathed in love.
…I don’t know how to change the world, and am having a hard time even changing myself. But, without worrying about grandiose schemes and big, big plans and schemes, how can we somehow find ways, even little ways, to realize that others need love just as we do, and begin to contemplate how to ferret out and find those who need it the most, and LOVE them? “It’s gonna take a whole lot of love.” A WHOLE LOT OF LOVE. I know I need it myself. And I’m not very good at loving others.
…”Spiritual traditions,” such as Buddhism, teach us how to meditate and how to be content and even thrive, or so they say, by searching inside, being silent, and finding oneness from inside, even without getting external love from others. Even monks living alone in mountain caves are said to be extremely happy. Maybe that’s possible, for a precious few, and I advocate those practices and do them myself. But for most of us, our biology is very strong. What can we do?
withthesongstillinsidethem 