Suicide 2

   I think this is true.  If you are in the midst of mortal physical agony,  nothing else matters.  A woman in labor can not care if her house is burning down, it doesn't matter if she wins a million dollar lottery.  She is obsessed only with  finding a way to ease the terrible pain which wracks her body.  A suicidal person is likewise oblivious of  everything else in the world, including loved ones.  Everything is put aside in a desperate search for a way to end the pain of living.  Nothing else matters.  The deeply primal force that urges a newborn infant to cry out, as the only mechanism it has to assert self,  is the same force that propels one into doing whatever is necessary to assert self at the other end of the spectrum of life.  Nothing and no one can outrank the concept of self. Witness how parents love their own children more than any others; the children, as other loved ones, are an extension of self.
     We hear sirens, harbingers of potential tragedy, and our minds race as to where our loved ones are, and, once their safety is satisfied, to the hope that nothing bad has befallen anyone we know.  Our priorities are in direct proportion to their impact on our lives.  How very selfish of us.  The saying goes that you can't love another until you love yourself first.  With love or not, self is all any one of us has.  Everything else and everybody else can and will ultimately leave.  We are, each of us, alone.