Gaining perspective

When you are young you have no perspective at all regarding life. You might think you do but you don't really.

You might think life is wonderful (because that is all you have experienced)
You might think life is bad (because that is all you have experienced)

But, both points of view are wrong because life is always both.

The real question is: "Can you survive all the highs and lows of your lifetime?"

This might be the most important question here. Because if you cannot survive the highs and lows of your life then your life will end suddenly or slowly. But one or the other never the less.

So, gaining perspective on what life actually is is likely your best friend in all of this. If a lover you believe you cannot live without dies or walks away from you to someone else, often people take their own lives (or want to). However, this is no useful solution really at all.

I've been there. I know about all this.

And when faced with suicide I realized I couldn't do this to my parents and to my friends. For myself I had no problem ending my life at all. But, as a responsible human being I couldn't do this to my family and friends after I observed what suicide did to many families in chain reactions of suicides ongoing often. So, ending your own life often just causes a whole sequence of people to directly or indirectly end their lives too.

So, I stayed alive even when I had to bite my own lip until it bled in self discipline to try to stay alive for others.

But, if I hadn't done this from age 21 to 23 I wouldn't have made it to 30 and to 32 which was wonderful about until I was 37 and my father died and then it was difficult again until I was 50 but then at 50 when I almost died it all came into perspective when I was forced to retire or die then and I began to understand my whole life much better then as I prepared for my own death from fall 1998 until may 1999 when doctors told me I likely wasn't going to die.

So, perspective is what you need to understand your lives better. Lives are never perfect but parts of your lives can be wonderful and it is worth being alive for the wonderful parts and often they come when you least expect them "By God's Grace".