Just reading a bit about his life today is enough to convince me that he was a practical, busy, and enterprising person who tackled problems seriously and systematically. His involvement in various projects shows sustained effort at difficult things. He wasn't "bookish" in the least, if "bookish" means tending to neglect the things outside of books. We should take his suicide as evidence that the techniques that work for other people aren't sufficient for everyone. David Foster Wallace is another example of someone who was well-read in everything from mathematical philosophy to self-help literature, who famously talked about cognitive therapy in a commencement address he gave, who was disciplined enough to write 1100-page, two-and-a-half pound books, and who surely did not want to be so miserable that he would choose to end his own life.

Maybe those of us who are doing okay are more skillful, or maybe we are dealing with more tractable problems. How could we know the difference? What evidence would be relevant to that distinction, if not the fact that people brighter and more accomplished than ourselves have failed?