suicide

Usually a good sleeper, at 64 and after several years of a declining business which is now in a financial death spiral, I’ve developed a depressing habit of waking up at either 1:30 AM or 3:30 AM and beginning the long solitary trek through ‘morning anguish’. Morning anguish is my term for the early hour’s crashing waves of negativity that befalls those whose internal guidance system chooses the self-defeating rituals of worry to sleep, anguish to rest, and suffering to slumber. Why this occurs at random intervals is a partial mystery. The other part of the mystery is not really such a mystery. Maslow, bless his tedious scientific soul, wisely asserted that our needs are organized as a hierarchy, with the physiological needs (food, water, shelter, warmth) at the bottom. As a baby boomer product of the 1950’s, physiological needs were always relatively easy to meet. Jobs were plentiful and confidence blew like the wind. Life was challenging but there was always the unspoken assumption that the physiological material goods (like food) would flow to us by divine right and sanctity of our country of origin. If anything really went seriously bad your Dad would fix it, and if not he could still beat up anyone else’s Dad. Realistically, most of us probably won’t get to Maslow’s ‘self-actualization’ level, esteem happens intermittently on a rare good day, love and belonging is never all that sure, and we’ve all broken the safety rules with impunity in the name of fun. But […]