The story of a father in Quang Ngai hugging his two biological children and jumping from the Truong Xuan railway bridge to the Tra Khuc river, causing the death of a 2-year-old girl, is causing public outrage. On the morning of November 27, the Quang Ngai Provincial Police issued a decision to detain this man in an emergency to investigate signs of murder.
Previously, at around 9:00 p.m. on October 13, a man riding a motorbike to the Ben Thuy bridge area across the Lam River connecting Nghe An and Ha Tinh provinces, then hugging two young children and jumping into the river also choked many people up, its aftermath still weighed heavily on the minds of those staying there.
These incidents are not just a "newspaper" that makes people tremble, but a knife in the conscience of the whole community. What was behind the departure? Is it the pressure of a job, a broken heart, or an hopeless cry for help from mental health that has never been listened to?
Everyone must be choked up and haunted by the image of a motorbike with a broken sleeve, short sandals on the side of the bridge, and below is the cold water that has swallowed up fate. Haunted by the brutal contrast between the innocentness and purity of children and the dark, desperate decision of the father.
Then we were shocked and wondered: What did that father think at the last moment? He held his children in his arms to warm them up for the last time, or to drag them all into the darkness of deliverance and guidance when they fell before the "mountains" of life?
In East Asian culture, the father is often likened to a mountain of red paint, a pillar, the most solid support for the family. But we forget that mountains can also slide, and pillars can also break if the burden placed on them is too much to bear.
This heartbreaking incident forces us to look straight at the terrible pressures that modern man is facing. It can be debt surrounded by economic failures, endless unemployment, or more tragedy than the breakdown of a family marriage... When "having money and clothes" is no longer a daily worry but becomes a fear, when the home is no longer a place to return to but becomes a prison of arguments and blame, human psychology is very likely to fall into a state of being together.
More frighteningly, it is the silence of men. Social opinions say that men are not allowed to cry, are not allowed to complain, and must be strong. This is what causes psychological damage and signs of depression to be suppressed and accumulated like a slow- detonating bomb. The father in this story, perhaps before stepping up to become a bridge, had many sleepless nights, thousands of times wanting to scream, saying: I am so tired! And when his reason was swallowed up by negative emotions, he chose death as the only way out.
However, no matter how painful the father's situation is, we cannot and are not allowed to justify the act of taking the lives of children. Those children are completely innocent. They do not cause debt or break up their parents' marriages. They have the right to live, to grow up, to go to school and to be loved, whether their parents are together or not.
The act of hugging and dancing with a bridge, under the name of "not wanting your child to be miserable", is actually the ultimate selfishness of adults. That is the distorted thinking that children are the property of parents, and parents have the right to decide their life and death. No! Children are independent individuals. When the father decided to end his life, it was a personal tragedy. But when the father drags the children, it is a crime.
We are living in a world of interconnectedness, but the connection between people is more loose than ever. A person can have thousands of friends on social media, but cannot find one person to share with when at a dead end. We often pay attention to empty complaints and sad states of relatives, and when the incident happens, it is all but two words if.
There is a great need for "soul stations", hotlines to support more effective psychological activity. And most importantly, the care of family and relatives. If someone had held that father's hand, someone had said "it's okay after all", or at least "let the children, we'll worry"... then perhaps the tragedy hadn't happened.
If life is too harsh for you to move forward, please don't think that death is the way out. And if someone has decided to give up, please let the children stay. Don't show your love to deprive your children of their future. Your children's lives have a whole sky ahead, don't extinguish it with the darkness of adults.
