A thought for the day

[chipotle]

I still see my hands coming off the railing. [...] I instantly realized that everything in my life that I’d thought was unfixable was totally fixable—except for having just jumped.

—Ken Baldwin, who survived jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge

(From an article in the New Yorker referred to by author Nick Hornsby in an interview I heard yesterday. The article notes that survivors “often regret their decision in midair, if not before.” One suspects the regret rate is no lower for those who don’t survive.)

Comments

[chastmastr.livejournal.com]

And a very good thought for the day it is...

Life Is What You Make It.

[xydexx.livejournal.com]

Seriously.

Re: Life Is What You Make It.

[alinsa.livejournal.com]

If only it were that simple.

Re: Life Is What You Make It.

[dour.livejournal.com]

If only you wouldn't make it more complicated. ;)

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'm just too inured to the idea of suicide, but I got to 'After treating himself to a last meal of Starbursts and Skittles' and just lost it. And then a tourist interrupts him and makes him take her picture in front of the bridge. It's like a John Cusack movie.

[chipotle.livejournal.com]

Well, people who are about to commit suicide are definitionally not quite right. But, yes, "like a John Cusack movie" is a good description.

"It's a shame to throw away a perfectly good white boy like that."

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

I was thinking about it, trying to decide why that line struck me so funny, and I think it's also partly because the piece is written in a way that's all like "Isn't this so poignant?" And then I get to the line about the Starbursts and Skittles, which is so over the top that it breaks the spell. You're waiting for the next line to be, "And then a seagull pooped in his eye." Maybe if the author had used it further into the article, he could have gotten away with it in front of insensitive people like me.

What struck me is that supposedly there's one jump every two weeks (even with people watching out for it now), because you don't hear about that. And that over a thousand people have jumped. There's the core of a horror story in there somewhere, one where the bridge has soaked up all this malevolent energy and now calls people to jump...

[misscitrus.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting thought. Sort of contrary to the ones that've been wandering through my head lately.