What is this about?
Having a society based on pressure for high achievements in all walks of life, reverence for aesthetics, and strict maintenance of the Confucian hierarchy, the Republic of Korea understandably has an annually increasing rate of suicide. It has maintained its second place in the OECD Suicide Rates for a long time. The detailed motivations of each person to pull such an act varies, but fundamentally, everything boils down to stress. Whether this be from work or a specific event, virtually everything can be stress-inducing.
To encourage employees to value life, funeral simulations are becoming popular among CEOs dealing with stressed workers. Partakers in this pretend ritual are trapped inside a coffin for any length of time up to thirty minutes. While the idea of this is horrifying, in such a society where suicide is often the “only” option left, the minutes in the coffin provide a time of reflection and appreciation for everything they had when living. They also write final letters and wills, and just this part is enough for people to make people cry – sometimes experience is the only way to learn.
How does that apply to you?
Death itself is not something that can be experienced beforehand. By the time one reaches his death, it’s too late. The scary thing about all of this is that suicide is not specific to one country, one sex, one age group. It is one of the top 10 causes of death within Canada. Valuing life and time over worldly gains is something not many people believe in generally. However, the time that one has, as a mortal human being on this planet, should be honored. If death is the final destination of life, why expedite the process?
Perhaps we cannot get rid of all stress-inducing things. But balance in life is what everyone needs. No student can study for every day of the 12 years of their schooling career. Life is not a “one or the other” choice between social life, work, and sleep. There is definitely a middle ground between all three.
In the end, death is just not the easy way out. Everyone has so much potential. Embrace life in the form it comes.
Sources
Evans, Stephen. “The employees shut in coffins.” BBC News. n.p. 14 December 2015. Web. 15 December 2015.
“Suicide rates.” OECD Data. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. n.d. 15 December 2015.
