My friend has passed away from old age now. But during the 1980s he was a friend and he was not only extremely intelligent (IQ 200) he was also very intuitive like I have also always been.
One day he told me a story. I had been to his church and had met this young man he later spoke of as he whisked the man and his girlfriend and parents into a counseling room.
Mr Friend who was both a lawyer who had once been District Attorney for Santa Cruz county in California was now a Jesuit Priest (which he became after he was district attorney). So, now this young man was saying he wanted to commit suicide and the young man who was about 21 years old had been cornered by his girlfriend and parents to be counseled by this Catholic Priest.
The Priest racked his brain in trying to logically convince this young man why he shouldn't kill himself. He said to him, "Your parents and girlfriend love you. Your Girlfriend wants to marry you. Why do you insist on killing yourself?"
Finally, the Priest had an insight because he was brilliant in all ways. He said to the boy, "You know everyone is crazy don't you?"
This seemed to break the ice with this young man and the priest noticed this. He followed up, "Everyone is crazy here on earth. We all just pretend we are all sane. Facing potential death every single day of our lives (our own and others whom we love) is a terrible burden to carry. So, it makes us all very crazy."
This was exactly what the young man needed to hear to make sense of his life. He married his girlfriend and had no more thoughts of suicide after that. Because if everyone was crazy from this and not just him he could live with that.
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