Thanks people. It seems to me that this tragedy is larger than my friend's suicide, though. I know so many people of my generation who have tried to take their own life, and many more who have either dabbled with or thrown themselves headlong into the living death that is heroin. I spoke to my mother about all this, and she says that something has changed in the world, that there are vastly more suicides etc. in my generation than in hers (is this true?), to say nothing of the heroin. She couldn't understand it, because she said that life today is no harder than it was then, and in many ways life then was much harder than it is today (most adults were still working in the pit when she was young). She thought it may be that this generation's expectations are higher, so we feel more let down when life doesn't measure up. My own feeling, though, is that people have lost hope. My mother was born just after the second world war, and although life was hard they did have hope - the post war dream. Thatcher may have ensured that it was an illusory hope, but at least it was hope for them at the time. What hope is there for the young today? Even before the two towers fell all that most young people could see for the future was a slow side into environmental catastrophe as the seas rise, the skies fill with smog and the oil runs dry. On top of that most are now terrified at how out of control the world has become, with the War of Terror. On top of that there is the wage slavery that both my and my mother's generation have in common and that people need hope to sustain them through. I personally have hope, unshakeable and deeply-rooted. The real tragedy is that so many people have lost sight of it.
Events like this are fuel to my fires: the fire of my anger, my burning desire to change the world; the fire of my love, my determination to celebrate every sweet moment of precious beautiful life.
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