How Paying a Little More Attention Can Save Lives

Our inattention makes us ignore people’s silent cries for help

We live distracted lives. Inattention or scattered attention is modernity’s defining behaviour.

Our distractedness has consequences, both trivial and profound.

When a friend smiles at you, you may pass them by. When a friend or acquaintance contacts you unexpectedly, you may get irritated or cut them off with a few words.

The consequences could be both unimportant and disastrous. Maybe, your friend just wanted to revive a frozen relationship. Or the person who contacted you was facing an existential struggle and could have reached out to you as a last attempt to seek solace before taking the final plunge into obliteration.

Despair is a silent killer

When people lose hope in life, they struggle to exhibit their feelings. Despair seizes control of their brains and hinders their ability to articulate their struggle.

When despair is invisible, people who work and live with the victims fail to recognise they have fallen into the bottomless pit of hopelessness.

The victims of despair are silent outwardly, but their souls try to communicate with others desperately. They want to ask for help, the last chance to save themselves from self-destruction.

They don’t know how or who to ask for help. Dark despair paralysed the victim’s thinking, so they hesitated to seek professional help.

Sometimes, they don’t want to trouble their loved ones. So they try to contact some friend or acquaintance randomly in the hope of finding a saviour. Their attempts to communicate their despair indirectly to a third person fail as the friend or contact may have no clue about the victim’s existential battle.

Standing at the precipice of despair, having lost all hope, the victim takes the plunge into self-annihilation.

Many stories of despair end in this tragic way. Could we avoid these tragedies if we developed the ability to be more sensitive to subtle distress signals in others?

Could we hear the silent cry for help if we paid more attention to others?

Take random events seriously

“I think that’s what scares me: the randomness of everything. That the people who could be important to you might just pass you by. Or you pass them by.” ( Peter Cameron in his novel, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You)

Randomness plays a vital role in our lives though we try to dismiss it as inconsequential.

Attentiveness helps us deal with randomness responsibly. Inattention will make us regret the consequences.

I have had a painful encounter with randomness, which haunts me with a deep sense of guilt.

During my college days, I had a close friend who spent a lot of time with me. I will call him X to protect his anonymity.

X was knowledgeable and excelled in public speaking. He was mercurial by temperament.

X’s mood swings bothered me a lot. He was friendly most of the time but behaved rudely and insensitively occasionally.

I ignored his tantrums as he was otherwise kind to me. I was the only person with whom he confided his intimate worries.

He was in love with a girl in our class. She did not reciprocate his love.

My family circumstance separated us permanently. My parents faced financial distress, and I had to take up a bank job to support them.

The bank job kept me busy, and I lost contact with X. There were no mobile phones in those days.

Friendships, like garden plants, need constant nourishing. If neglected, friendships wither away like untended plants.

One working day, a couple of months later, I received a call from X. I took the call impatiently. I was busy with my work.

X wanted me to lend him a couple of books. I said I would and hung up.

There was nothing amiss in his voice. Most importantly, my work distracted and prevented me from asking about his life after I left. I did not have the time or patience to continue the conversation and talk about our past days.

A week later, I got the news that X had committed suicide.

My old college mates informed me that X had become depressed after I quit college.

I could have saved his life if I had talked to him more. Perhaps, X was already contemplating the extreme measure and contacted me as the last chance to find hope in his life.

I let him down miserably. I treated a random event as insignificant and betrayed an anguished soul’s desperate cry for help.

Final thoughts

Our digitally-mediated lives are so full of distractions that our attention spans have touched a low point. Instead of looking around and engaging with strangers in public, people stare at their screens.

Everybody is fighting battles of which we know nothing. When our friends or family members suddenly become sullen and reserved, a kind word or two could help lighten the heavy burden they are carrying in their minds. Your random, casual talk could end up as a life-saver too.

When an old friend contacts you unexpectedly, pay attention and listen to them. Ask them if everything is alright. Who knows, you were the saviour they contacted as a final attempt to rediscover hope and meaning, as a desperate measure to justify their existence before taking the plunge into nothingness.

Attention saves lives.

Thanks for reading this story.