good looking...

I was recently with someone and we were talking about another tragic suicide... and this person said, as people often do when talking about a suicide, "...So confusing, he was such a good looking kid... so sad..." 

Which got me thinking about how often, when we hear of a suicide or similar tragedy, one of our go-to responses is something along the lines of all the successful things they had going for them in life... and, more interesting, what those successful things are. 

Good looking.
Football player.
Cheerleader. 
4.0 Student. 
CEO

Two points: 

1. I hope to God to never hear anyone explicitly say "Yeah, kinda makes sense. Ugly kid with bad grades..." but... it is what we're often saying without saying it. That seems dangerous on all kinds of levels. 

2. Good looking, football player/cheerleaders/CEO's/ 4.0 students can still feel as though they don't belong, can still have mental illnesses, and can still be weighed down by the endless pursuit of trying to keep up. 

It's never a bad time to remember what we're living for and what we're modeling for our peers and the generations below us.