Nothing is as strange to the ears as the news that the very person you have always looked up to for inspiration has ended their lives without an explanation.
Creepy, isn’t it?
Now Karyn wasn’t the first on this list; mid 2013, we were greeted with the mutual suicide of co-motivational speakers/life coach and radio hosts, John Littig and Lynne Rosen. It sounds unbelievable, doesn’t it? That these two partners on air and in life couldn’t give life a chance to unfold into the reality of ‘the happiness message’ they preached all their lives.
That points to one of many things: they may not be able to handle the reality of what they preach.
But let’s not be too quick to judge, we’re talking about Karyn, right?
She was just 22, she still had more ahead of her than the 48 and 46 co-hosts who perhaps had been through too much.
For a 22 year old to think of taking her own life, we’d assume life for her has been awful; imaginably born in the jungle, raised by poor parents and tortured with constant disappearance of food from the table or probably got abused many times amidst all that. Then one day, she’d think “what the heck I’m I still doing here?”, and of course she’d get that answer in the abyss of suicide.
But that scenario doesn’t describe the Karyn we knew. She was driven to depression due to the loss of her mother, but her suicide still leaves us with a question, why?
In my humble opinion , she wasn’t mature enough for what she was doing.
Life throws heavy stones at us, but heaps of her audience seem to have experienced a lot, but still managed to see beyond what was going wrong, and through her advice managed to soldier on. They got stronger and managed to claim victory over the thorny patches of their lives. But their beacon, the one they looked up to, ended hers.
How sad?
Was Karyn Doing The Right Thing?
Of course, absolutely. She encouraged thousands to better themselves. In life there’s always an audience waiting to be motivated, inspired and cheered up. But there’s an important element to that, timing.
The majority of 22 year olds haven’t experienced much in life. They haven’t run businesses, haven’t had children, haven’t experienced the gore and absolute misery of life. They haven’t lost, haven’t suffered. How then can someone like that inspire people that have been to the abyss and back when they haven’t really experienced life?
I’m not trying to be critical of Karyn. Her death is a tragedy, not just to her and her family but to thousands of people she inspired, but I feel it’s a sign to many out there who are trying to skip the journey, the process towards where they want be. It’s in this process that inspires those from behind.
Love people, cheer them up, motivate & inspire, but make sure that is evident in your own life.
Selah.
Image: madamenoire.com
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of Pride Magazine Nigeria