A suicide, a policeman, and an act of irrational self-sacrifice
The panoramic view from the Nuuanu Pali Lookout on Oahu draws tourists by the busload. From that height, the island a thousand feet below disappears into the sea. The wind howls through the cliffs. It’s beautiful, and, for some, irresistible, a perfect place to die, a quarter mile straight down, the trade winds ready to scatter a body over the Pacific.
One morning, a police cruiser rounded the final bend at the summit. The officer behind the wheel saw a young man on the far side of the guardrail, leaning into the void. Without thinking, he slammed on the brakes, leapt from the car, sprinted across the road, vaulted the barrier, and lunged. His hand caught a sleeve just as the man pitched forward. For a moment, they both hung suspended over nothing. Then gravity kicked in. The officer’s boots scraped for purchase, but it was too late. They were falling together.
At that instant, the second officer jumped from the cruiser, vaulted the same rail, and caught his partner by the collar. With a tremendous tug, he pulled both men back to solid ground. Tourists screamed. Some ran for help. Others simply wept.
When the chaos subsided and the rescued man was taken to a hospital, a reporter asked the officer why he had done it. Why had he risk everything—his life, his family’s future—for a stranger? Even as a police officer, there was no rule, no law, no duty compelling him to make such a sacrifice.
The officer paused, then said softly, “I don’t really know. It wasn’t a thought. It was a feeling, that if I didn’t try to save him, I wouldn’t want to live with myself.”
The Impulse Beyond Reason
Such extreme self-sacrifice seems almost alien in our culture, one that places self-preservation before everything else. Who leaps to their death for someone they have never met? It sounds like myth. Indeed, mythologist Joseph Campbell, who lived not far from the Pali cliffs, called the officer’s action “a psychological breakthrough,” meaning a moment when something from his unconscious superseded rational thought. The officer didn’t weigh pros and cons. Some older, deeper impulse moved through him. What was it?
Neuroscience has begun to solve that mystery. Research led by Tania Singer at the Max Planck Institute shows that when people witness another’s suffering, the same regions of the brain light up as when they themselves feel pain. Giacomo Rizzolatti’s team at the University of Parma reached similar conclusions. The implications are startling: our nervous system is built for empathy. We are biologically programmed to feel one another’s lives.
Frans de Waal, in The Age of Empathy, describes similar moments among primates: monkeys who decline food rather than harm other monkeys, or one monkey cradling another after a fight. The impulse to protect, to comfort, to share pain, seems to be not merely a moral option but part of the very fabric of life. From that view, the officer at the Pali Lookout wasn’t saving a stranger so much as saving a life they both shared. His reflex came from an unconscious recognition that the border between “you” and “me” may be an illusion.
The Thread That Binds
For millennia, wisdom traditions have taught that every being, every life, is woven from the same thread. Buddha called it the Buddha nature: when others suffer, it is part of us that suffers in them. Political systems, economies, and historical events can influence or lessen our tendency for empathic connection, which explains why moments like the one on the Pali Lookout feel so astonishing. They remind us of a part of ourselves that is the antithesis of the world we live in.
“If I didn’t try to save him,” the officer said, “I wouldn’t want to live with myself.” In that simple sentence lies the oldest of moral truths. Sometimes we call it the Golden Rule: Behave toward others as you would have others behave toward you. In the words of the Bhagavad Gita:
They are the mature yogis who
by comparison to themselves
see the equality of all beings
in happiness and distress.
(6.32)
