I read a short article in the Glasgow Herald yesterday about a London based financier, Kirk Stephenson, Chief Operating Officer of a private equity company called Olivant. Originally a New Zealander, he had a senior position in his company. He was a wealthy man who had a £3.6M Chelsea home, a home in the West Country and who loved to travel, acquiring a formidable knowledge of boutique hotels and loved going to opera. He was married and had an 8 year old son. Here’s how his family described him –
a life-enhancer – not with a showy, life and soul of the party sort of charisma, but as a planner and coordinator who quietly and with no fuss ensured everyone around him had a marvellous time. A dedicated father and a devoted husband, he valued his family above all else. At the same time he had a gift for friendship and was a generous and exceptional host, gathering his wide circle around him in summer villas all over Europe, as well as for parties, dinners and opera. Any occasion with Kirk was a wonderful experience. He spent many a fine – and less than fine – summer evening listening to opera at Garsington, Glyndebourne and the Grange with friends. (He) also loved board games and tennis, passions he shared with his treasured eight-year old son Lucas.
Aged 47, he killed himself by throwing himself in front of a train last week.
How do you make sense of that? You’ll find so much in self-help books, books about happiness, websites which advise you how to have a good life……..but just what constitutes a GOOD life? By good life, I mean one worth living, one you want to hold onto, one you don’t want to give up.
Obviously I only know what the papers published about this man, but the details are desperately perturbing. Those little details paint a picture of a successful professional, a materially wealthy man, a loved man with many friends, a young son…….a man who committed suicide at 47.
I don’t have any answers here. It’s just the story really disturbed me, and it’s continued to niggle away at me since I read it.
Its because its not these outside things which make us feel happy, loved, successful, or satisfied. That can only come from within. So many people are missing what is within. It makes me sad, and that is why I blog.
How can you ever make sense of a story like this ? The ultimate success story in our economy and yet the deep kernal of satisfaction and self worth was obviously missing?
I worked in the East End of Glasgow and obviously many people had problems but I was overwhelmed by peoples generosity of spirit. When my wife had our first child, ‘hard’ people who would bring in hand knitted garments and i have never had this in the ‘rich’ suburbs . I had to write an essay on Eudaemonia and look at Aristotle’s ideas relating to the good life. Perhaps the ideas you highlighted relating to ‘outraspection’ are worth discussing . I have been dipping into this http://tonywilkinson.com/ and Tony gives some sensible approaches which many would find difficult to argue with.
ian
This is an enormous question. I was clinically depressed for most of my life and thoughts of suicide were my constant companion. It changed a few years ago — a spontaneous remission that took me a while to notice and so I can’t pinpoint what made the change. There may be something biochemical about being in my fifties or it may ‘simply’ be a substantially calmer outlook on many of life’s big questions, a deeper acceptance of “things as they are’.
During the time when all I wanted was to just die, I also had many of the outward signs of a good life. It didn’t matter. I didn’t feel connected to it or fulfilled by it. Knowing that I ‘should’ feel happy and fulfilled but didn’t or couldn’t only added to the weight of oppression and despair. Despite outwardly seeming to thrive, there was a deep inner failure to thrive. Meaninglessness and despair. What kept me from suicide was the knowledge that my mother depended on me and a feeling of obligation to her. My only goal was to outlive my mother. Then I could die and be free of all this pain.
But as I say, it changed. It started to change maybe three years ago. I began to have peculiar sensations I couldn’t identify, and gradually realized they were commonly known as peace, contentment, happiness, hope. It was unsettling and, to a large degree, destabilizing. I knew how to be sad, frustrated, angry, despairing, hopeless. I didn’t know how to be contented. The ‘happy’ part was especially frightening for its unfamiliarity. Although “unfamiliar’ is not quite accurate. I had had some relief from persistent despair with antidepressive medications, but no support for coping with feeling so profoundly different (which was terrifying), and so I didn’t trust it and couldn’t bear it. By relieving the despair, the medication had stripped me of what I thought was my essential self and replaced it with something I didn’t undertand and couldn’t suddenly “be.” Sure enough, when I stopped taking medication, I became “myself” again, the self I knew how to be, had been for decades, and was accustomed to. Perversely, to, the talk therapy that was required to receive medication ignored the destabilizing effect of the medication and focused on “reliving the past in order to release it.” Which was rather like simultaneously ingesting stimulates and sedatives. Massively confused, I fled back to the devil I knew.
In 2001, I fell into a teaching job and discovered that I had a talent for it and was fulfilled by it — spiritually. I would NEVER have chosen this. I hated being a student and resented most of my teachers. I try to be the teacher I wanted to have and that has been working out surprisingly well. But finding it was truly an accident. I also stumbled into a branch of art making that is enjoyable and fulfilling. My art friends keep encouraging me to pursue it professionally, but I’m not sure I want to do that. I’m afraid of putting a pressure on it that would undermine the peace it gives me.
So I guess I do know what made the change — a positive connection to others and a positive connection to myself, that occurred at a pace that allowed me to assimilate the change. And I am lucky that it happened that way. I am not “grateful for all that went before that made me what I am today” because all what went before was excrutiating. And I don’t entirely trust that this sense of well being will persist into whatever the infinity of my life may be. But I am glad of it now. Now when sadness comes, it also goes — that never happened before — and that doesn’t freak me out. Now happiness rises and I recognize it and don’t bolt from it out of fear of the unknown. Now when I’m out of sorts, I have something I can do to ameliorate it. And I also have a scale of “how bad is it really” that helps me keep perspective on the normal daily fluctuations of my own moods and the moods of others. And I know that mood fluctuates in two directions — not just deeper and deeper into despair, but also away from it.
I know that I am lucky to have found this. I also believe that if I had killed myself the relief would have been equally profound. The pain of that intractable sadness is indescribable, unimaginable to those who don’t experience it. I am sorry for the pain and confusion and guilt and sense of failure and all else that arises in the people who are close to someone who kills her- or himself. But I am not sorry for the person who does it. The pain is that heavy a burden. “Live — no matter the cost” can be too costly. I am grateful that, for me, at this time, the pain has stopped. I hope it lasts.
Very sad, indeed!
It could have been an Aurum person for all we know…
Bob, I think we can all try to build lives that make sense for us, that reflect our values, that are grounded, that make us feel glad to be alive, that aren’t based on materialism alone.
And yet none of those things are an absolute protection against depression, which can destroy any value and render any experience or feeling meaningless.
I suppose for me this suggests two things: that we need as a society to learn how to live in healthier ways, and that we need to keep on learning how to help and support those who are depressed.
@ Melanie — awesome sharing of the inside of depression! These words you wrote, about the projection of a “good life” –“I didn’t feel connected to it or fulfilled by it…” are so true to those who act out of an social obligation to hide the depression, but who live tortured between the outside mask and the inner hell.
@Bob — the pain of depression — so intense as to bring on real thoughts of suicide — is so excruciating, so mind-numbing, so draining, so physical in many ways that death seems like the only relief. It is as if emotional pain is filling every pore, marrow, and cell of your body. The ability to mask this may seem odd, but the self becomes totally convinced the inner hell is too shameful to talk about or impossible to be understood by others. How can they understand? They can’t even see past your mask, so how can they help? It’s a downward spiral that some don’t come back from.