L'Appel du Vide

Right after finishing my undergraduate studies at CSU, my family went on a Caribbean cruise. There is a lot I remember from the trip: my inaugural scuba-diving sessions, sunburning my thighs so badly I teared up while putting on pants for dinner, gaining 10 pounds, subsequently realizing just how fat our country really is, the tour guide driver on St. Thomas who took us to a grocery store and a bank before getting on to the sites. Great times!

But one thing I remember and that has stuck with me since (and a sensation that I have felt at numerous times in the succeeding decade) is one that is hard to articulate without people thinking I'm crazy. While standing on the balcony of my parent's suite the first night of the cruise I had an unmistakable and non-suicidal urge to fling myself off the boat and into the water. 

Both of my adjectives are imperative there. Unmistakable in the sense that I really wanted to do that thing. It first started while taking pictures from the balcony and having this instant urge to chuck my camera into the water. I then thought/felt (let's not bring rationality needlessly into this), Why not chuck my whole self into the middle of the sea? I really felt it; really, almost, contemplated it.

As to the second adjective, and this is where it gets sticky, I really did not want to die. That is, of course, what kept me from ultimately taking the plunge: the whole inevitable death thing.

I have had this thought numerous times in the succeeding ten years (damn, I'm old). A lot of the times it is in similar high places: the Golden Gate Bridge; the summit of Sunlight Peak; the odd temptation to not follow the road on Red Mountain Pass and sail into the abyss. I have mostly kept this to myself because it is a hard thing to explain. The typical response ranges from outright confusion to outright concern. 

However, while traveling to Kenya a few weeks ago I asked the person next to me a very weird question: if some small part of her doesn't like the idea of a plane crash. (It should be noted here that the inherent creepiness of this question is mitigated somewhat by the fact that I knew this person, a student at my school; this is not the type of thing I go asking random strangers on an airplane however much that would make for an interesting flight.) Expecting incredulity and horror I was met instead with recognition. It is not in the least that either of us wanted to die in a plane crash, but the intensity of experience of knowing that the plane is going down is a feeling we are not entirely opposed to experiencing. 

I'm afraid I've lost some of you. Let me bring science into this for a minute. When I got home I Googled (and fervently hope my work doesn't monitor my Google searches): Why do I want to jump off high places? (One of the real surprises here is that Google auto-filled the latter half of that search query.) A few articles came up referring to an academic study published in 2012 entitled: "An Urge to Jump Affirms the Urge to Live: an Empirical Examination of the High Place Phenomenon." "High place phenomenon" is the American psychological word for this feeling I am talking about. It is not very artful but it does get the basic emotion across. I can't read the full study because my school doesn't subscribe to the database that hosts it, but the title says everything we need to know for the purpose of this post: there is a way in which such desires enhance our willingness to live and our passion for life. They found that people with "no history of suicidal ideation" experience this phenomena at comparable rates as people with more of a temptation to suicide. 

After some more clicking around, I found that the French have a more elegant word for the phenomena: l'appel du vide, the appeal of the void. What a gloriously Frankish way of saying something. This is what I feel; not the desire to die, but the desire to experience the void. To know what it is to fall unrestrainedly and live to feel it intensely. If I could jump off a cliff without dying I would probably do it pretty regularly.

None of this is to say that this feeling isn't at least somewhat unsettling. It is. Most people don't understand it. I don't understand it. It is pre- or sub-rational. It's a feeling. And not one to be acted on. Writing about the concept Sartre reflected that it is unsettling because "it creates an unnerving, shaking sensation of not being able to trust one's own instincts." He's exactly right. But I think the American psychologists are onto something as well. There is something basically life-affirming about this desire. Maybe you should not trust your instincts in all cases (no shit), but every time you stare over a ledge and feel the urge to jump and refrain, you are affirming your commitment to life. And, to me, that is a feeling worth experiencing at odd times.

*I am working on a follow-up post to address the implications for this instinct if you actually do struggle with suicide ideation and depression. I will finish it, fittingly enough, if I do not die climbing Mount Rainier this weekend. L'appel du vide, indeed.