Here’s a Reuters story, via  China Digital Times:

In crowded, fast-paced and expensive Hong Kong, where financial success is paramount, depression is a growing problem.  There were 1,000 suicides in 2004, up from 915 in 2000.

     It is a familiar refrain in modern societies, and Chuang Tzu understands:

Once we happen into the form of this body, we cannot forget it.  And so it is that we wait out the end.  Grappling and tangling with things, we rush headlong toward the end, and there’s no stopping it.  It’s sad, isn’t it?  We slave our lives away and never get anywhere, work ourselves ragged and never find our way home.  How could it be anything but sorrow?  People can talk about never dying, but what good is that?  This form we take soon becomes others, and the mind vanishes with it.  How could it be called anything but great sorrow?  Life is total confusion.  Or is it that I’m the only one who’s confused? (20).

     He is not advocating suicide here, just pointing out the futility of "grappling and tangling with things."  If he could talk to a person contemplating suicide he would probably say, stop, don’t bring on the end before its time, just let go of those goals that demand so much of your time and energy.  Just let go.

     I think this passage is also meant as a cautionary note to those who believe they are fully in control of their lives.  They’re not, really, because they are merely working themselves ragged and never finding their way home.

     But could Hong Kong ever just let go and slow down?  Could New York?  I don’t think so.  And that’s why it seems to Chuang Tzu to be a great sorrow. 

     Maybe an individual here or there could get out from under the rat race, but there will always be plenty of others willing to keep pressing forward.