Shame and Pride

As a young man (I'm sure many of you will relate to this) I saw that I could not become who my parents wanted without likely committing suicide. This is a part of many young men and women when they have to find a way to "Break Away" in a good or bad way from their parents.

For me, all this came to a head when I was asked to leave my parents religion for being too 1960s and idealistic and progressive when I was 21. This was a collision of shame and pride for me and nearly cost me my life. However, over time I learned to stay alive by realizing that Pride (at least in the way I had been taught) was dysfunctional to my ongoing survival. So, I learned to give up pride at that point. By giving up pride I also gave up shame. Once I did this I could live without committing suicide by creating my own rules for living separate from the narrow confines of my parents rules for me.

So, often people who commit suicide are just not able to separate "What they need to stay alive" from what their parents need for them to be. One of the most important things here is "Critical Thinking".

If everything is just happy happy joy joy and no critical thinking is applied at all to this person's life, the more likely this person could succomb to death, dying, drugs or alcohol.

If this person cannot defend their right to existence against all forces save God they often will cease to be as a physical being here on earth.

Once a person learns to defend their right to exist against all forces then they can move forward as an actual living being that just might live to 100 or more years of age. However, without "Defending your right to be alive" like an animal would against all comers, suicide or drug addiction or alcoholism unto death or some other unfortunate state is the result.

So, this is a fight between forced enculturization by society and family versus a beings right to be alive no matter what that animals face in the wild.

Finding one's way from childhood to about 25 or 30 is a very risky business for us all which is why so many don't physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually make it through in one piece.