Editor – I want to say how shocked I was to read last week’s front page article.
In my day, which is not so long ago, taking one’s life was a sin. It was also a grown-up problem; you never heard of young children committing suicide. Now I am not going to throw the Bible at the issue and claim it’s a sin, although some might.
My concern is how this young boy slipped through the cracks into despair. How did he go from a happy-go-lucky teen to a suicide-in-waiting? I could easily blame the parents, but I am not going to, because I believe we, as a society, are to blame.
I think we – as a town, community and society – need to make suicide ‘un-cool’. We need to teach youngsters how to deal with life better. How could a 15-year-old have decided he had experienced everything life has to offer? How could he have decided that hanging himself was the right thing to do? Now these are not random questions I am posing to his family, teachers and friends, but at us as a collective society.
Is it our social-media-crazed society that makes every action, feeling and text an over-amplification of what it actually is? Are we guilty of allowing our children to grow up too fast? I am inclined to believe this is the truth of the matter.
We are a society of inconsistent values. On the one hand, it is okay for children as young as 12 to have sex, but we want to increase the legal age to drink to 21 years old. How can anyone develop well in a country that cannot decide on the fundamentals?
Reading his letter on the front page, this was a young man who should have had a brilliant future. We, as elders within the community, need to be role models. We need to fight for our children’s right to a normal life.
Google is not the answer. Google never raised a child nor cried at a funeral, yet to many, the Internet is the answer to everything.
We sit detached from each other watching TV, and texting on WhatsApp and Facebook. We have become identifiable with our status. A ‘like’ here and an ‘un-friend’ there can be the most hurtful of things.
We must care enough!
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