VOLUNTARY DEATH – IS DEATH AN OPTION
04 Mar 2011 Leave a Comment
in Absurdity, Death, India, legal issues, Life, philosophy, Thoughts Tags: choice, pro-life, Samadhi, Suicide, Voluntary death, war
The first argument I ever had with this person who went on to be my best friend and now my husband is – whether suicide is okay.
He argued for the right to kill oneself as being a part of, a sort of sub-sect of the right to live. I was 18 then. I couldn’t grasp what possibly life could become, how intolerable it could be for some people and how some people just live life because its there.
Animals have self-preservation in their instinct. But humans, we are capable of a rational choice. This is not a justification for every child who fails an exam and hangs from the fan. But I am speaking of a calculated choice.
What if something happens in your life, which makes living or continuing to live, meaningless? I know of one such thing in my life. I would not want to live if the thing I dread the most happens as it would have belied everything I stood for and everything my husband stands for and what we i.e. me and him represent.
It would not be out of failure or dejection or depression, so much as it would be out of not wanting to live beyond.
I am not advocating suicide or escape from life. My proposition is simple. I should be able to take a cold, rational choice to end my life. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami keeps coming back to me. Now that I think of it, the female protagonist in the novel, tries hard to live, to justify her living and her life. But she is unable to sustain it. After her boyfriend killed himself, she tries to live life, but cannot. So at some point she ends it.
I, as a living being, breathe. I, unfortunately cannot stop breathing when I feel like and therefore, if I wish to stop living a gruesome intervention is required. Is this the reason people abhor suicide – because it is an external intervention. Is it only the goriness of it all? The means of death are not natural and trouble the minds of those left behind, is that why suicide is shunned? Can the means of doing something justify the desirability or the undesirability of an end?
What if I were to go into a forest and end my life there? (I am vegetarian. So in all probability I would starve to death.) What if my body became one with the earth, then would I be hailed as a saint?
What about soldiers? Don’t they choose to end their lives when they go into a war? Is that not a rational choice? I can fully imagine what the consequence of allowing people legally to end their lives would be in the world today – total anarchy. But it still does not make it an illegitimate demand.
Suppose I am 65 and find out that I have cancer. Well, I am not going into the euthanasia debate. So, if at 65 I find out I have cancer, and I am a doctor lets say. I know death for me is going to be a long painful affair. I am happy with my life and choose it be a peak of my life. I die.
In India, the saints and yogis and all the great spiritual masters have attained high stages of meditation. The ultimate stage is the Samadhi, where the saint or yogi, chooses the time and place of death (in common man terms). They go into a deep trance from which they never come back. Is that suicide? No.
So why, if I should choose to end my life, I shouldn’t be allowed to. The state like in the case of most other subjects has no answer to this. I would probably be shot for asking. That should serve my purpose, but that is not how I would want to go.
The Face of Death
30 May 2007 1 Comment
in Absurdity, Death, Life, philosophy, Thoughts Tags: accidents, birthdays, Death, Life
The vision one can never get over is the face of death. We were in the middle of a river, high speed river in a canoe. I cannot swim and I did not have a life jacket on. One mistake was made and I saw the face of the navigator. A quick, sharp glance at the oarsman. But it was too late. The water had already streamed in. My boat turned upside down. At that moment, I remembered my brother’s words – “paddle, always paddle to reach the surface”. I paddled. There was the light. I could see light! Before I knew it I had climbed onto the back of the boat.
My mother was stuck underneath and we recovered her after 15 long minutes. We had taken a trip to celebrate my birthday. I thought I would never want to celebrate my birthday ever again. But I remember the face of death and smile today, because I saw that it was not meant to happen. I will have my second birthday since that day and I can finally celebrate life! I have finally understood why a birthday is meant to be celebrated. I now have the reason to have a ‘happy’ birthday.
