Why life is worth living is indeed an urgent question, but it is rarely the
question of suicide. The question of why you don’t kill yourself arises only
if you think that there are reasons why you would kill yourself, and people’s
lives are rarely so miserable that such reasons become prominent. If depression,
disease, and despair were the overwhelming character of everyday
life, then people would have a daily struggle about whether to go on at all.
Unfortunately, such a struggle is not rare among young adults: an American
survey of university students found that 10 percent said they had seriously
considered suicide during the preceding year.