[Baypiggies] Suicide

[Shannon -jj Behrens]

My friend committed suicide. He was a brilliant programmer, and he had
everything going for him. He was very successful.

I'm crushed because I know I could have helped if only he had given me
a chance. He never did.

We in the programming world aren't always the most emotionally
balanced. I know of three others who took their lives in the
programming world. I've hinted at this before on my Bipolar Lisp
Programmer post
<http://jjinux.blogspot.com/2008/05/bipolar-lisp-programmer.html>. To
compound matters, our society has been moving away from personal
interaction and responsibility for decades, leading to a culture that
is toxic.

Mother Theresa said that the greatest poverty that she ever saw was to
see people who felt unloved. If your friends are feeling unloved,
please reach out to them. We are each far more loved than we think. In
the programming world, it's so easy to get caught up in petty
struggles, like Pylons vs. Django, Ruby vs. Python, free software vs.
open source, Linux vs. pretty much everything else ;) What we forget
is that we're all people with hopes and dreams, fears and
insecurities. We're all trying to change the world, but as Mother
Theresa said, "In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do
small things with great love."

Look out for each other, but if you have no where to turn, contact me!
Call me directly at (925) 209-6439. Don't consider the middle of the
night an inconvenience. When else am I going to work with five kids
around ;) I will do everything I can to help. I don't want to wake up
on another day to find another brilliant mind missing from this great
community of thinkers. We are a community and we are only as great as
the individuals that thrive and share with one another in that
community. Everyone contributes, whether in small ways or large, and
every loss is felt by more people than we consider in our moments of
darkness.

-jj

-- 
http://jjinux.blogspot.com/