The Forever Decision by Paul Quinnett   Chapter 6

THE BUG IN THE CUP

Now that we have a little more time together, in the next few chapters I want you to do some exploring with me. I want you to imagine, for the moment anyway, that for the last several weeks or months you have been like a bug trapped in the bottom of a cup. How you got in the cup, I don't know. How you will get out of the cup will be, most likely, a result of something you do, or what someone helps you to do. And, just maybe, I can help you a little.

The bug-in-the-cup idea is not mine, I got it from another psychologist who, in his lectures, used to use the example of a bug trapped in a cup to illustrate a major problem we all face from time to time: namely, that once we are trapped in a situation, our solutions are limited by what we can see. We have walked around and around inside our cup and, seeing no way out, we decide that all hope is finished and that we are forever trapped.

We climb up, but slip back down. Everything we try fails. Then, when we are convinced there are no possible escapes left to us, we become depressed and helpless and hopeless and, sometimes, suicidal.

While human beings are bigger and supposedly smarter than bugs, I am not so sure that, when it comes to getting ourselves out of the cups we find ourselves in, we always do a better job of it. Once we are into a particular set of problems, I am not so sure all of us can think our way out of them -- at least all by ourselves.

In this morning's newspaper I read an account of a farmer who killed himself. He left a wife and family behind. For most of his life he had been a successful man but now, with prices for his cattle and wheat falling, he was faced with enormous debts that he could not pay. He had inherited the farm from his father and had, we can only guess, felt that to lose the farm was to lose everything. And so, in good health, still young but no doubt depressed, he killed himself.

As I read this story, I thought of the bug in the cup. I thought of this man as stuck in a situation from which he could see no escape. And when I reread the story, it was clear to me that the farmer had not talked to his wife or his friends about being trapped in a cup.

Everyone was "shocked" at his suicide. So I concluded that those who knew and loved him could only be "shocked" if he had never told them of how trapped and depressed he felt. And, at least from the story, it appeared to me that he had killed himself without reaching out for other possible solutions, other possible ways to get out of the cup. In a word, he had "kept his problems to himself" and died with his honor intact.

Maybe you, like me, think it is a tragedy that a man would kill himself because he could not pay a debt. Maybe you are thinking that if you had been in his shoes, you could have done something different. Sold the farm and started a business? Moved to California and become an artist? Gone back to college to become an engineer? We can only guess what he might have done with the years yet ahead of him.

But of one thing I am sure; so long as any of us take it upon only our own shoulders to solve a problem, we will be limited in how well we solve it.

Imagine with me, if you will, that you and I are going to take a trip to a distant planet. Our flight is booked and we are leaving next Tuesday. We have a few days to pack and the people in charge of the flight have told us we must be ready in three days. While food and water will be supplied, each of us can bring along only ten things. We will be gone from earth for one year

. What would be our first step?

Should we, for example, each go home and write down the ten things we would most want to have along on such a trip and then pack them up? Or, should we first have a meeting and jointly decide which twenty things we should take together?

The answer is obvious to anyone who has ever participated in this little game. In a word, you don't want to start off on a trip to a distant planet with two guitars, two television sets, and two copies of the same book. Rather, if we will work together, we will come up with a much better list, a list that doesn't overlap and one that gives each of us many more of the things we would like to take along on such a trip.

My point is this: If you think that you alone must solve all the problems of living, then you had better be damned smart!

In my experience, people (including myself) are not nearly as smart as they sometimes think they are. We think that because our eyes and ears and brains are all in working order, that we can know what to do in all sorts of situations we have never been in before.

But this simply is not true.

All of us are like bugs in a cup -- we can see around the insides of our cup, but we cannot see over the lip. We cannot see what lies beyond. And what we cannot see, we cannot imagine doing.

Then, too, there is the matter of information. As I have said, it is my belief that all of us make the best decisions we can given the information we have at hand when we make the decision. For example, I have little doubt that the decision to die by suicide is the best decision available for people who decide to do it.

They have thought everything through, weighed everything, and, when they ran all the available data through that computer in their head, suicide was the answer.

But wait a minute.

Did they have all the information available to make the decision? Did they know, for example, that the depression they are experiencing is highly treatable and probably time-limited?

Did they know that someone out there in the future of their lives could come to love and cherish them?

Did they know that, within a few days, things could begin to change for the better and that their formula should have included these changes?

Or did they, like the person in our space-trip game, just go home and pack ten things?

While I am not suggesting that suicide is always a stupid decision, I am suggesting that it may be an uniformed one and that, before we decide to kill ourselves, maybe we ought to give ourselves a bit of time to come to know something we maybe didn't know before, something that might give us a different view -- maybe even a view over the edge of the cup.

So, for the next few chapters, I'm going to give you some information you may not have. This information may or may not make a difference, but I am going to bet that it will.