Take it Easy

And who by fire,

who by water,

Who in the sunshine,

who in the night time,

Who by high ordeal,

who by common trial,

Who in your merry merry month of may,

Who by very slow decay...

(Leonard Cohen)

Maestro Cohen quite precisely locates the phenomenon of silent suicide, the one where there are no spilled brains, empty shell casings, ropes swinging over a pushed chair, jumping off bridges, cutting veins or crushing Phenobarbitol.

That is the suicide where a person slowly rots, has long given up on life, ignores inertia as if it were a boring fly and just waits for death to remember and take him. And that could be after 5, after 25 or after 55 years, there is no rule.

It probably depends on how long it takes for the life juices to finally dry up. Or in short : "My life and I have gone our separate ways,'' as one character from the excellent ex-Yugoslav social film ``Petriya's Wreath'' said, thus almost perfectly defining this sad state of affairs.

That silent suicide is a mass phenomenon in these parts. Incomparably more numerous than active suicide, although even that figure is not to be neglected in the last two damned decades. Lifeless faces grafted onto lifeless bodies that are only legally and formally considered alive - can be seen at every turn, on the bus, in front of the counter, at a stop, at the market, on the street... and maybe even in your own home.

But what separates such people from dramatic suicides who actively approach the problem of shortening their own lives - most often it is the immediate environment, family, toys, coffee, beer, the Sunday game that has been losing a bit of its charm for decades, peer pressure amidst the variety of zombies... and maybe it is that some kind of hope still smolders, somewhere hidden in the subconscious that maybe tomorrow...

Tomorrow...

What tomorrow?

Nothing.

Something.

Maybe something

What do you know?

(Roger Mortis, 097)