a serious inquiry:

[moominmolly]

How do you help someone feel like life is worth living when they've basically just given up and decided to wait to die?

You'd think I'd be good at solving this one, but I'm not.

Comments

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

do something enjoyable with them. take them to the woods, put them on a pony, read them poetry, listen to them talk, tell them how i'd miss them.

this has not been a hypothetical question for me.

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

And what if it's someone you don't actually see very often?

I can't help feeling that I shouldn't make it about me. The hole in my world would be immeasurable, but I also don't see that as being a good reason for someone to hang on.

Poetry. Poetry is good. Thank you.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

it's often been someone i don't see often. sometimes i've made an effort to be more apparent in this kind of situation.

sometimes knowing what holes they'd leave is exactly what they need to hear.

mary oliver's "wild geese" is one poem i've used for this. (among quite a few others!) here it is, on the off chance you're unfaniliar:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

[sunstealer.livejournal.com]

that poem has been on the front page of my LJ for a long time. it's one of all time favorites :)

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

yay! mine too :)

[dietrich.livejournal.com]

mine three.

[diatom.livejournal.com]

mine four! I also like "The Journey"...I'm not sure if it helps or hurts, but it speaks to separating the wheat from the chaff:

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

...

and... I think there's a good selfishness that comes, in valuing one's self that last bit, enough to "save" one's self... Maybe this person forgot they were worth saving.

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

you quote the best poetry!