Perspective

"So I was sitting there in the bar and this guy comes up to me and he said 'My life stinks'. And I saw his gold credit card, and I saw the way he was looking at people across the room, and I looked at his face, and you know, what a good looking face. And I said 'Dude, your perspective on life sucks.'"

--Mika, "Blame It On The Girls" (introduction)

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Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean-favoured and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good Morning!" and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich, yes, richer than a king,
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine -- we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked and waited for the light,
And went without the meat and cursed the bread,
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet in his head.

--"Richard Cory", Edward Arlington Robinson (published 1897)

Who's right?

Is Mika right, suggesting that outward appearance should mirror internal reality? Or can the suicide of Robinson's Richard Cory possibly be justified?

Since the day many years ago when a close friend referred to himself as Richard Cory (and scared the crap out of me), I have been inclined to take Robinson's perspective over Mika's. That friend is (thankfully) still among the living, and still living what most people would consider a charmed life. I know better. His life stinks, and I wouldn't wish I was in his place for anything.

We're often admonished to "count our blessings", and most of us have at least a few we can enumerate. Richard Cory amassed more than his fair share. But it's worth noting that for some people, the accumulation of "blessings" on one scale (usually, but not always, the material) is an attempt to balance a deficit on another scale...an attempt, more often than not, doomed to fail. You can lack for nothing and yet keenly feel a hole in your life where--for example--a loving companion should be: the ensuing despair can be all-consuming if you let it.

I've said often that "pain is mandatory, suffering is optional", and it's true. But that doesn't mean suffering should be dismissed. This is particularly true for those like my friend Richard Cory, whose suffering is even more strongly felt because society says that people in his position are clearly above suffering....