Choices: Her choice and ours

The girl who was looking down over the railings was a stranger and one of the many students who transit between our transportation network each day. That was until she stood on the MRT tracks looking down.

She was about to make a choice - between life and death.

Tonight, we know her as the “female commuter at Yio Chu Kang station who climbed over the half-height platform screen door and got onto the track on 2 August 2021".

Who is this girl, she who looks no more than 16 years old of age? She is a daughter to loving parents. She could possibly also be a sister to a younger brother, and she is certainly a granddaughter to her doting grandparents.

Immediately, we focus our attention on her mental health. As a bystander, we instinctively juxtapose that image of her standing over and looking down with our own physical self, and concluded that somehow we are sane and she has “mental health issues”.

When we judge, we have, in fact, made a choice. And by making a choice, we consciously and subconsciously discriminate, and when we discriminate, we stigmatize, creating a physical and emotional divide between ourselves and the very young life standing on the parapet and looking down.

Life is filled with a series of minor and major choices. We choose whether to stay in a job or leave one. We choose whether to study or to rest for the day. We choose what to eat, and we choose who we hang out with. We choose where we want to go, and what we want to do.

These are the very choices we make every minute of our lives. It’s so obvious that we sometimes don’t even notice that it has happened.

At times, certain choices change our lives, and we don’t even know until these moments arrive.

At times, these choices are conscious. Other times, these choices are unconscious.

Nevertheless, these choices come with a price.

Sometimes, these choices are the difference between life and death. But to some, death is less painful of a choice than life. That’s the dilemma of a suicidal person.

And who is that suicidal person? Before we are too quick to point that finger to someone else, or to that person we read about in the news, we should take a good hard look at ourselves. Today, it was her, that girl we saw. Tomorrow, it could very well be you and me.

Today in Singapore, a girl chose life over death. She survived a suicide attempt, but she could well be dying inside.

Tomorrow, almost like clockwork, there will be another person who will be making his/her choice between life and death. 

The day that we are able to see beyond the material and transient, the day we will begin to acknowledge collectively as a society that our nation (and our home) is sick.

Singapore is not well, let’s not kid ourselves anymore. The more we hide behind our illusions of success, the more we become addicts of modernity and our own perceived achievements, productivity and material gains. We have become so dependent on the material, online and offline, that we have forgotten the very human in us and around us

Every suicide or attempted suicide, publicly reported or otherwise, forms part of our collective experience of brokenness.

Behind the glitz, the glamour and the perceived economic miracle is a society and her people broken and crying out for help. The suicidal person is the physical and violent symptom of a community that is in pain and not at ease with itself.

As we wake up tomorrow to a new day, shall we slow down, and take a listen to the many silent cries in our midst?

Let’s collectively acknowledge the epidemic in our midst and gradually take steps, as a nation, to address the institutional issues behind our stresses and brokenness.

Too many Singaporeans are [thinking of] taking their lives. One too many. Just too many.