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Death by Suicide or Martyr

Life is precious and generally regarded as something to be fiercely guarded. It often puzzles us when news of a suicide reaches us. Someone decided to end this important gift of life. What desperate straits must have occurred for them to prefer death to life?

Then, there are those who choose to sacrifice their life for the sake of others. Firefighters, police and martyrs throughout history have put their own lives on the line in order to save someone else. They regarded life as something so precious they were willing to give up their own life to save that of another.

When death is that of a suicide or a martyr we wonder what must have been going on in their head in the last few seconds of life. Did they have any regrets? Were they ready to go? Did they have time to prepare or come to grips with the ending of their life?

Those who successfully commit suicide do so for many reasons. All of them have to do with preferring death to life. Those who choose to die by suicide because of a terminal disease choose to decide when to die. They usually make the decision based on quality of life and wish to end it before the quality is unacceptable.

Accidental suicide by way of drugs or alcohol ingestion. Young people especially flirt with dangerous and self-destructive behavior such as drinking alcohol to excess or using drugs that they know are risky and may result in their death. Many individuals who flirt with death by taunting police to shoot or those who purposely crash vehicles may do so because they wish to die but are afraid to take their life out-right.

Many depressed individuals especially the elderly take their own lives out of desperation, despair, loneliness and grief. Some take their life because they can't stand the life of pain from a chronic disease.

Most adults from one time or another have come to the realization that they have the option of taking their own life; there is a choice - to live or die. Many have only a fleeting thought along the lines of suicide.

The majority of suicides are calls for help that go unanswered. Intervention and treatment can give the individual the ability to overcome his/her problem and prevent future suicide attempts.

Martyrs can be public servants doing their duty, or they can be ordinary citizens called upon to do something heroic in a moment of time where all thought of self-preservation escapes.

Individuals, the suicide and the martyr have lost all sense of self-preservation and choose to end their life. The difference between the two is that one fails to see the value in life and the other recognizes the value in saving another.