fine vs. not so fine

The recent suicides of celebrities Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain have spurred a discussion on mental health, or mental hygiene, if you prefer, which is good, right? Some people close to these poor unfortunates have expressed surprise at these suicides; some have not. 

We register surprise at these tragedies because of the mismatch between outer appearances and inner feelings.

Is an outward show of happiness an American trait? When I traveled to foreign countries or if I have engaged in conversation with foreign visitors here, more than once I have heard them mock our cheeriness, our brightness. One person pointedly criticized our chirpy "have a nice day" or "how are you." They were British.

We say we're fine, don't we?

The first reason people do that is out of a social convention. Rarely would someone reply to a co-worker in the hallway asking how you are with a literal sob story or anything more than a superficial declaration of fineness. The troubled person doesn't want to be unseemly or overly personal with another who is not much more than an acquaintance, even if the two work side by side eight hours a day five days a week.

By virtue of their training and their mission, sales representatives often exude an avalanche of bonhomie. It evidences the power of positive thinking, in the mold of Dale Carnegie, who wrote the transformative best-seller and whose legacy involves courses and practices.

These are understandable social norms. 

I couldn't tell you whether Americans are different from anyone else on these matters. 

But what if one is not fine?

What are the avenues to travel, the resources to tap? I don't mean help lines, though I suspect they offer measurable value and life-saving tools.

In rooms where people seek recovery from addiction and other malaises, some try to subvert the facade that masks unhappiness by saying f-i-n-e stands for "fucked-up [or frustrated] insecure needy enraged." Variations include  "... neurotic emotional," "needy egotistical," and assorted alternatives. 

And they say, "You're as sick as your secrets."

What's the solution?

Not being a mental health professional, I don't know. I doubt the answer is to be exceedingly frank, candid about secrets, and self-revealing at the drop of a hat. But I would say it's critical to talk to someone, anyone, especially a confidant, a trusted friend.

I recently watched the last several episodes of "Mad Men." If anyone ever needed help, it was Don Draper/Dick Whitman. Near the end, he was suicidal: gone, lost, wandering, meandering, searching, driving through America's heartland to save his own heart.

His escape, his flight, didn't work.

Not exactly.

Remember what did work?

Don/Dick witnesses another man in the same kind of grave pain he is in. In a therapy group, the man tells his story and then collapses into sobs. Don/Dick watches, moved to his core, and walks over and hugs the man for all he's worth, with all he has. Don/Dick is saved by a perfect (very imperfect) stranger, another wounded man just like him, a man who felt invisible to those around him. Don/Dick ferociously embraces the weeping man and also breaks down himself.

So it wasn't a matter of talking.

It was a matter of being there -- literally, being present.

And from what we could see, it saved Draper/Whitman, and presumably the Weeping Man as well.

Something happened.

And why for those two, and not the two mentioned at the top, is a mystery.

Look Before You Leap

Yesterday, just after hearing the haunting and apocalyptic "A Day in the Life" by The Beatles on the radio, while approaching the crest of the roadway on the Tappan Zee Bridge (spelled wrong on an official New York State Thruway sign near Port Chester), with radiant Manhattan about 10 miles downriver to the left, I saw this sign, or its approximation, in the late-afternoon lambent light:

LIFE IS WORTH LIVING

along the right railing, with a "life line" phone number to call.

I suspect the signs (I saw one Saturday, coming from the other direction) are an attempt to ward off suicides, or at least potential pedestrian suicidalists (presumably with cellphones, to call the help line). One would think drivers bent on the act would not need to wait until reaching the highest point of the bridge (a lovely bridge, if I may so). Well, come to think of it, why would anyone need to reach the highest point of the bridge before leaping? Certainly, it would not be necessary in terms of the efficacy of the leap. A leap even at the first locus over water seems plenty high enough to do the deed. (But, as you all know, "I Leap for Kierkegaard.")

I also wondered: why limit signs like this to dramatic venues and vistas such as the Tappan Zee Bridge or the famously suicide-prone Golden Gate Bridge, et cetera? Are there not landward temptations to self-extinction? Indeed there are. Perhaps LIFE IS WORTH LIVING signs should be posted just as pointedly at the entranceways to workplaces, government offices, retail stores, churches, homes, rocky cliffs, flat plains, and at the doors of your local Wal-Mart, Target, The Home Depot, or other big-box store. And who but my eponymous graffiti artist who goes by the tag of LIFE should paint these vivifying signs?

Before you get all fretful about my mental state, let me add these are not lugubrious musings. Far from it.

Life is worth living.

I see the signs everywhere.

(A parenthetical word on bridges. Pons is the Latin word for bridge. Pontifex, a word for pope, literally in Latin means "one who makes a bridge." So does this mean I have been pontificating? Or am I simply bridging the gap between the quotidian and the numinous [check out that etymology!]?)