Suicide is very different from self sacrifice, avoidable martyrdom, engaging in life risking activities, refusal to prolong one's life through medical treatment, euthanasia, overdosing and self inflicted death that is result of coercion. What is common to all these is operational mode: a death caused by one's own actions. In all these behaviours, a foreknowledge of risk of death is present coupled with its acceptance. But all else is so different that they cannot be regarded as belonging to same class. Suicide is chiefly intended to terminate a life – other acts are aimed at perpetuating, strengthening and defending values.

Those who commit suicide do so because they firmly believe in finiteness of life and in finality of death. They prefer termination to continuation. Yet, all others, observers of this phenomenon, are horrified by this preference. They abhor it. This has to do with out understanding of meaning of life.

Ultimately, life has only meanings that we attribute and ascribe to it. Such a meaning can be external (God's plan) or internal (meaning generated through arbitrary selection of a frame of reference). But, in any case, it must be actively selected, adopted and espoused. The difference is that, in case of external meanings, we have no way to judge their validity and quality (is God's plan for us a good one or not?). We just "take them on" because they are big, all encompassing and of a good "source". A hyper-goal generated by a superstructural plan tends to lend meaning to our transient goals and structures by endowing them with gift of eternity. Something eternal is always judged more meaningful than something temporal. If a thing of less or no value acquires value by becoming part of a thing eternal – than meaning and value reside with quality of being eternal – not with thing thus endowed. It is not a question of success. Plans temporal are as successfully implemented as designs eternal. Actually, there is no meaning to question: is this eternal plan / process / design successful because success is a temporal thing, linked to endeavours that have clear beginnings and ends.

This, therefore, is first requirement: our life can become meaningful only by integrating into a thing, a process, a being eternal. In other words, continuity (the temporal image of eternity, to paraphrase a great philosopher) is of essence. Terminating our life at will renders them meaningless. A natural termination of our life is naturally preordained. A natural death is part and parcel of very eternal process, thing or being which lends meaning to life. To die naturally is to become part of an eternity, a cycle, which goes on forever of life, death and renewal. This cyclic view of life and creation is inevitable within any thought system, which incorporates a notion of eternity. Because everything is possible given an eternal amount of time – so are resurrection and reincarnation, afterlife, hell and other beliefs adhered to by eternal lot.

Sidgwick raised second requirement and with certain modifications by other philosophers, it reads: to begin to appreciate values and meanings, a consciousness (intelligence) must exist. True, value or meaning must reside in or pertain to a thing outside consciousness / intelligence. But, even then, only conscious, intelligent people will be able to appreciate it.

`LUCKY' TEEN KNOWS THE DESPAIR OF CHILDREN IN ROMANIA, TRIES TO HELP by Darryl E. Owens © THE ORLANDO SENTINEL Used with permission

The castoff child escaped 11 years ago, rescued from a hell called Orphanage No. 4.

An Orlando woman moved by a television report and a hole in her soul plucked him from a Romanian orphanage brimming with garbage and apathy.

He had a shaven head, piercing brown eyes, and white spots streaking across his thighs where injections of sedatives had scarred him.

Soon he was thousands of miles from smoldering reality of revolution, living in a safe, sun-drenched city where people only have to step through theme-park gates to experience lands of make-believe.

Day by day, waif grew into Nick Simon, a suntanned Florida boy eager to catch up on years of missed chocolate bars and loving hugs.

In June, more than a decade after he left orphanage, Nick stumbled upon a 20/20 TV special that captured his interest. ABC correspondent Tom Jarriel had returned to Romania to see if anything had changed for orphans since his eye-opening 1990 report. It had: Thousands, now in their late teens and early 20s, were living in sewers. Waves of haunting memories washed over Nick.

He searched despairing faces of children -- once warehoused, now turned out on streets -- staring, knowing. Knowing among faces might be children with whom he shared a crib and a cry.

Knowing among those faces were children certain to barter their bodies to survive, sniff glue as an escape, die lonely deaths from AIDS. Knowing his face could have been among those flashed in a blur across a 32-inch television screen.

But he knew, most of all, something must be done. And so it was that a grass-roots campaign, "Backpack Carepak," a drive to collect and send winterwear and hygiene products in gently-used or new backpacks to street urchins in Bucharest was born in heart of a 16-year-old native son.

"What really struck me," he says, "was, like, `Whoa! Hold up a second. They're living in streets now? I was lucky to get out of there at time that I did. I could have been one of these kids living in streets. Not enough people are speaking out for kids out there that need help."

Nick slides into a cramped booth at Panera Bread near Lake Eola on a recent afternoon and regards his lunch: tuna on honey wheat, Greek salad, a Pepsi.

With his nut-brown mop, bushy eyebrows, and an elongated face that narrows to a rounded "V" at chin, Nick could pass for shy, boyish cog in a boy band -- if he were shy. Truth be told, Hollywood is where his head is. Already he has appeared as an extra in films and starred as Jesus in a Godspell production.

He likes his girls cute and speaks lingo. As Nick puts it, he is, "out there," which is, apparently, something desirable, in way that bad means good.

By all appearances, Nick is your average red-blooded, American teenager. Nothing like 51/2-year-old who came to America unacquainted with Santa Claus. He stabs at his feta, looks up glassy-eyed.

"I still have dreams of Romania," he volunteers.

Sometimes when he sleeps, he says, his mind paints Jackson Pollocks, scored by Rambo. Flashes of white, blue, red. Dogs barking. Guns rat-a-tat-tatting. Sirens screeching across his mind.

It was only later, when woman he would come to call Mama told him story behind his coming to Orlando, that Nick would tie his dreams to revolution in 1989 that swirled around Orphanage No. 4.

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In 1992: They look like a typical family; Mom, Dad, kids and family dog. But Connie & Paul Simon, with a young Nick and Liana, paint their own special portrait of that theme.

The brush, however, is same: need to love and be loved.

A SILENCE THAT SCREAMS

It began in summer of 1990, when Connie Simon, then a teacher at Howard Middle School in Orlando, traveled to Romania to distribute 14 boxes filled with toys, clothes, and medical supplies gathered by students, staff and others moved by a 20/20 segment on Romanian orphans.

The report pried lid off a secret shame, born of tyrannical 25-year reign of Nicolae Ceausescu. In an effort to swell Romanian population, he banned birth control and abortions and heavily fined couples that produced fewer than four children.