Originally posted by: Nebor
This post is especially poignant today.
Especially after reading the other two threads... definately.
Most of the responses thus far were really good, and very true.
There's one that I didn't see mentiond - perhaps his parents simply didn't love him. Perhaps he didn't feel that anyone loved him. That's the danger of being a parent of a child with talents like that. If you value their achievements, and at the same time fail to both understand, and value the *person* inside, then it does indeed lead to those sorts of feelings. (If this #@$% messageboard software didn't eat my post that I was going to reply to the other thread with, I was in the process of expressing this thought in a lot more personally-related detail in that thread.)
Let this be a warning to those parents that may be exceptionally demanding or demanding of "perfection" from their offspring - take time to value the person inside too, otherwise that person may shrink down to nothing, secretly believing that they aren't accepted by their parents, unless they continue their achievements, or continue to exceed expectations. The danger is that if the parent continually increases the level of expectation, then the child is never able to meet them, and thus continually believes inside that they aren't sucessful, and that their parents still don't accept and/or love them. That's the truely sad part about all of this. To some, exceptionally-high intellence is just as much a "curse" as exceptionally-low - they are outside of the accepted "norms" of the bell curve either way, and thus experience discrimination because of it. But the basic human need to feel loved and acceptance by one's parents and peers, exists regardless of where one falls on the curve. Good parents are able to look past their offspring's exceptional abilities or levels of achivements, just as they are able to look past any major deficiencies as well, to see the person inside, and love them as they are, as their child. But not all parents are able to do this, some are blinded by, and thus preoccupied with, levels of achievement. I have a sad feeling that may be what has happened here. The real reason that most take their lives, is that they feel unloved. It's as simple as that.
Me, I didn't die, per se, I became virtual instead. A protectively-architected mental seperation between the intellectual domain and the personal/emotional one. Hey, WFM.
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