The Death of Judgment

A family friend recently committed suicide. The emotional ripples through the community are still shaking people and have those closest to him teetering on the brink of falling flat. The “note” is a closely held secret I haven’t been witness to see. But I am glad I haven’t seen it. I am reading my version of it in my mind and mentally having a dialogue with his son while I do.

If there had been a terminal disease, we would understand and forgive the ripping away of him in such a brutal manner. We could all sympathize with his agony and wish him well to be out of it. But to the best of my knowledge he was perfectly healthy in body. Which is what brings me to my conclusion, he had terminal cancer of the soul. Suicide means a person is so isolated and alone they cease to connect with the world they live in to any real emotional degree. They cannot see their connection to the world around them in any real context. The cancer takes over the functioning of the soul and strangles out joy, love, understanding and most of all perspective.

Without perspective, he couldn’t see that what is judged success or failure in popular culture mattered little to the people he mentored. The gift of his caring heart over years to the people who worked with him, the gift of his competitive nature that brought out the best in the athletes around him, the gift of his son, were all treasured gifts we valued in him. But he couldn’t love himself and so, pushed love away from those who would offer it. He isolated himself as the cancer ate away his soul with bitter, ego-driven, self-judgment, and fierce determination. He is not the only one I see suffering with this cancer. I think this cancer is contagious.

Right now we have a two-year astrological aspect that moves through our ways of judging others and ourselves. Through it, perfection can be surrendered to the bigger goal of self-understanding. I know we need to draw lines that help us define who we are—it is a healthy means of becoming an individual. That is where discernment serves us and helps give form to personality. But without checks and balances on that trait, it can drive us mercilessly down pathways that insist on right and wrong, good and bad. It becomes the force that separates and mutilates the “other” in the quest for being right. Or it turns inward and becomes the corrosive acid that values others while seeing nothing worthwhile in us. Each time you are “wrong” is another piece of your soul surrendered to that etching away of self worth.