[Baypiggies] Suicide

[Shannon -jj Behrens]

On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 10:17 PM, Shannon -jj Behrens <jjinux at gmail.com>wrote:

> My friend committed suicide. He was a brilliant programmer, and he had
> everything going for him. He was very successful.
>
> I'm crushed because I know I could have helped if only he had given me
> a chance. He never did.
>
> We in the programming world aren't always the most emotionally
> balanced. I know of three others who took their lives in the
> programming world. I've hinted at this before on my Bipolar Lisp
> Programmer post
> <http://jjinux.blogspot.com/2008/05/bipolar-lisp-programmer.html>. To
> compound matters, our society has been moving away from personal
> interaction and responsibility for decades, leading to a culture that
> is toxic.
>
> Mother Theresa said that the greatest poverty that she ever saw was to
> see people who felt unloved. If your friends are feeling unloved,
> please reach out to them. We are each far more loved than we think. In
> the programming world, it's so easy to get caught up in petty
> struggles, like Pylons vs. Django, Ruby vs. Python, free software vs.
> open source, Linux vs. pretty much everything else ;) What we forget
> is that we're all people with hopes and dreams, fears and
> insecurities. We're all trying to change the world, but as Mother
> Theresa said, "In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do
> small things with great love."
>
> Look out for each other, but if you have no where to turn, contact me!
> Call me directly at (925) 209-6439. Don't consider the middle of the
> night an inconvenience. When else am I going to work with five kids
> around ;) I will do everything I can to help. I don't want to wake up
> on another day to find another brilliant mind missing from this great
> community of thinkers. We are a community and we are only as great as
> the individuals that thrive and share with one another in that
> community. Everyone contributes, whether in small ways or large, and
> every loss is felt by more people than we consider in our moments of
> darkness.
>
>
By the way, I blogged this, and there's a pretty helpful thread going on:
http://jjinux.blogspot.com/2009/11/suicide.html

-jj

-- 
In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with
great love. -- Mother Teresa
http://jjinux.blogspot.com/
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