On Student Suicide

I found out today that one of my former philosophy students recently committed suicide. There are no words to describe how tragic her loss is, as is the loss of every suicide victim with the unique qualities they have as individuals. This student, however, was unusually kind, intelligent, self-reflective, charming, bright, passionate about her future, could light up the room just by being in it, and had clearly overcome at least some of the personal obstacles and demons she had sometimes alluded to in class.

In retrospect there were warning signs I should have noticed at the time, as there almost always are when someone is suicidal. And although she did share some of her personal struggles, I could have been much more proactive at making sure she knew she was loved, appreciated, valued, and not alone, no matter what she was going through. All the future success in the world is for naught, after all, if our students don’t make it that far.

One of the topics I’ve traditionally covered in my Introduction to Philosophy class is the problem of suicide and meaning as discussed by 20th-century existentialist philosopher Albert Camus. In the opening lines of his well-known essay The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus claims that suicide is the fundamental question of all philosophy:

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest—whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories—comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer. (Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus)

The question of suicide, even at my worst, has always been very abstract for me, even if I myself am in constant danger of veering toward negative self-talk and suicide ideation, despite the other, more optimistic parts of my personality that are deeply at odds with my tendency toward melancholiness and reverie. The loss of a beloved student to suicide, however, highlights the fact that suicide is not abstract but a real and immediate issue for those who are struggling. Without question I will be changing my approach to teaching Camus and The Myth of Sisyphus, given the way it has hit home for at least one of my students, and for me as an instructor, as it perhaps also has for countless others around the country in these turbulent times.

Another existentialist philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, once spoke of the way in which we feel the weight of the world on our shoulders as a result of our human free will. And while it’s a vast overstatement to say that we philosophy instructors carry the weight of responsibility for our students’ entire future lives on our own shoulders, the loss of a student to suicide reinforces the fact that, while we may not carry the whole world on our shoulders, we do carry the weight of our students’ wellbeing on our shoulders with the power to build them up and give them hope or to tear them down and yank that hope away from them with the words, actions, and attitudes with which we approach them on a daily basis.

Whenever a student commits suicide, we can’t help but feel that we’ve failed him or her—failed to help carry him or her through the most difficult stages of life, through the darkness of their own personal and emotional cave into the light that comes not from outside, from others, or from above, but only from within. And no matter how brief and tangential, but meaningful nonetheless, the intersection of this student’s life and my own life might have been in the context of a meager introductory philosophy class, I can’t help but feel that I failed her in some way, however irrational and unjustified that feeling might be.

If I failed you, Dear Student, I’m sorry. I hope I made a positive difference in your life, however briefly, even if I couldn’t have known the entirety of what you were going through or what might have made a bigger difference for you in the long run. You were loved, and you will be missed. The world needed your light so very much….