APRIL 26 — The past week has been rough, what with my father's stroke and my brother being in a car accident where the road just caved in, sending the windscreen of the vehicle he was in careening into the distance along with my blood pressure.

It's the reality of life where in actuality we are all pretending not to realise we are living on the edge of that precipice that is fate — where no matter how hard you plan or pray, things often are out of your control.

My father and brother are as well as they can be, considering, and I am grateful.

I am also saddened to hear South Korea has lost yet another young star to an early death.

How does a country that struggles to raise its birthrate not even be able to keep their youngest and brightest alive?

Wild animals often eat their young when they feel threatened; some strange instinct reacts to the perceived danger by giving up on their young surviving it.

Suicidal ideation is something like that; the afflicted feel letting themselves be consumed by death to be the safest and best solution.

What people don't seem to understand or seem unwilling to, Malaysian media included, is that suicidal ideation isn't just harmful to the ones who bear it but those exposed to it.

Suicide reporting needs delicacy and sensitivity.

It is a sad fact that copycat suicides often follow reports of suicide and media practitioners and organisations are often thoughtless about the harm they can cause.

Our own Health Ministry has had guidelines for reporting suicide and yet we see even mainstream papers blatantly ignoring them.

There is no benefit to the public in describing in detail how a suicide occurred and yet publications think the lurid details will get them more eyeballs, without caring if it causes loss of life.

Some of the most beautiful things in the world are also the most delicate and fragile.

It's contemptible that "snowflake” is used as a derogatory term when snowflakes are beautiful wonders of Nature, fleeting and ephemeral as sunsets and cloud formations.

We are all, if you think about it, rather fragile beings.

That does not stop the self-help and self-actualisation gurus from constantly talking about the latest personality trait aspirational quality such as EQ, grit or resilience.

I wish instead we could just be more accommodating to the fact that falling apart or being really close to doing so is natural and human.

Someone posted about how as she got older she stopped trying to "mask” or put on a facade to conform or be more accepted.

I think about that young man who died who was most known for having a bright smile and for his constant cheeriness, and how in his last months he apologised for not being at his best.

If only someone had told him, and so many other young people like him, that the expectation to always be at your best, to never show weakness, to pretend that you're not as fragile and as fallible as everyone else on this planet should not be a norm.

We need to accept the softer parts of ourselves and be accommodating as well of others' weaknesses instead of pandering to some societal ideal that is either unattainable or just plain harmful.

Say sorry for actual mistakes or causing some kind of harm but don't say sorry for being human and just having a bad day, or not feeling up to making others feel better by pretending to be okay when you're not.

The world is hard enough without being so hard on ourselves.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.