WHo said I didn't feel anything? What I didn't feel is empathy towards him.....he lived hard and died doing what he loved.........next. It's like when Whitney Houston died. Ok, I appreciated her music, and I felt sorry that she died but you just KNEW that something like this would happen to her with all the poor choices she made in life. Upset by it? Not at all. Why should we feel anything when a total stranger dies? Seriously there are literally thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people dying every second of every day. If you let yourself "feel" or get upset by a total strangers death, and admonish those who don't, then you have to take a good long hard look at yourself because you could spend your every waking minute being upset due to the shear number of deaths that occur.
Should we feel upset because they were famous? (even though I have never heard of this guy). Should we be upset because he was young(ish)? A lot younger people die more tragically than he. For eg: that young lady who was murdered by a fellow student and her boyfriend who are on trial for the murder right now. Yeah, I felt sorry for her, and her family because that really is tragic....
This reminds me of an ex of mine. We hadn't seen each other for a couple of weeks due to scheduling and had a big night planned. 5 minutes before I was to leave and go and pick her up she calls me up to cancel (not a rarity in her case). It seems someone died and she was too upset. I inquired as to who this person was. It seems a neighbour of her sister's cousin committed suicide.
I then asked her:
Did you ever meet him? No
Did you even know his name before this? No
Do you know these neighbours? No.
Did your sister know this guy? No.
Is your sister close to these neighbours because I'd been to a few backyard parties and couldn't recall the names? NO.
Wait, so you're cancelling a date with me because someone you've never met, and frankly, never even heard of died? Ummmmmmm
Needless to say, she finally came around and we did go out. During the night we spoke about it further and I said "yes, it is tragic that a young guy felt so bad that he thought suicide is the only way out but if there is really absolutely NO connection to you, why get upset about it? Life's too short"
A bit of a backstory about this YL is that she did have some emotional problems that she had to deal with and was seeing a therapist. When she went to him later that week she brought up the suicide situation and me. She told me later that her shrink said to her "he's a pretty smart guy, hang onto him. He's right. You can't go around getting worked up over all the tragedies in the world because you'd spend your whole life miserable. It's bad enough when something happens to someone you know and care about..." There was a term he used for someone who takes all the world's troubles upon themselves, but I can't remember what it is.....
Just one more thing: I have a saying that I use quite often, it is "there are worse things in life than death"......or "dying isn't the worst thing that can happen to you". If you don't get my drift then here's an explanation: what if this skiier was paralyzed? What if he was brain dead? That'd be a lot worse than dying. Same as a woman being sold into slavery and abused her entire life and being so emotionally and psychologically scarred that she'd never be sane.....there are a lot worse things that can happen to someone than death......
