The Parable of the Jumper

One day while teaching, Josh was asked, ”Teacher, how long must a politician threaten to do something until the populace will allow the politician not to do it?”

Josh spoke thus:

A jumper, eyes squeezed shut, was threatening to jump.

“I’ll jump!” the jumper threatened, “Don’t think I won’t!”

Nobody responded to the jumper.

“Don’t try and talk me out of it!” the jumper said.

Nobody tried to talk the jumper out of it.

“Because I mean it,” the jumper said, “I’ve reached the end of my rope!  I know that’s a horrible metaphor, especially under the circumstances, but I am!  I just can’t take any more!  So don’t think I won’t jump!  I have nothing to lose!”

Nobody disputed that the jumper had come to the end of the jumper’s rope.

“And don’t think reverse psychology will work!” the jumper said, “Reverse psychology is a risky approach, at best.  In the state I’m in, I might not respond predictably--in fact, I’ll go even farther: I will not respond predictably.  You can bet your last dollar on that one.  Okay, again, not a good metaphor under the circumstances.  I get that.  When a person blows loses all of a person’s money, and sucks that person’s family into a fiscal black hole out of which it might take generations for that person’s family to climb, then betting any dollar, let alone a person’s last dollar, is not a good option.  I get that, but you get my point.  I’m not going to fall for reverse psychology, because I won’t make the intuitive jump from action to reverse action, and when you tell me not to do something, like not jump, then I’m apt to do the reverse of that action, which is to not not jump.  Oh god, now a double negative.  But you get my point: tell me to jump, and I’ll jump!  So don’t try to talk me out of it by talking me into it.”

Nobody tried to talk the jumper out of it by talking the jumper into it.

“Why isn’t anyone answering me?” the jumper asked, “I’m reaching out to you!  I’m bearing my soul!  I’m crying out for help, and you say nothing?  What kind of people are you?”

Nobody opined what kind of people they were.

“That’s the world I’m living in!” the jumper said, “That’s the world I don’t want to live in any longer!  That’s the tipping point!  I’m going to go through with it!”

The jumper moved to step into the void.  The jumper was unable to step into the void.  The jumper was supine.

“You already jumped,” the jumper’s sibling told the jumper, ”And Mom says if you lose your lunch money again, you had better jump from higher than that.”