Maybe it is because life is so serendipitous and unpredictable. Like the old adage that the Persians claim the Sufi poet Attar of Nishapur wrote or the Jews attribute to King Solomon, “This too shall pass”. The problems or the joys we face in life are fleeting and nothing is really as it seems.
Maybe it is because some see a Deity as the Creator of life. Life then is seen not as a gift but a loan from this Deity that we are supposed to treasure, protect and make the most of. Then one day, we will be called upon to account for that loan called life and will be punished if we misused it and rewarded if we treasured and made the most of it.
Maybe its because the State sees life – all life – as something sacrosanct that falls under its purview to protect.
Maybe it is because there is the feeling that we are all in this together and turning one’s back on the experience is a betrayal of a common cause.
Maybe it is the loved ones one leaves behind…loved ones whose love was just not enough?
Or is it that life is seen as being so precious that no matter how terrible and unbearable one’s circumstances are, its sanctity should be upheld?
Is that why the issue of taking one’s life is so controversial?
Most consider life a truly great gift. That this fleeting, ephemeral experience on this crazy planet is a wonderful thing. Or could be a wonderful thing.
If life is a gift, then each of us has the right to do with it what he or she chooses. That is a right that comes with life. No one else can decide for a mature adult of sane mind what he or she can do with his or her life.
Even if it is the decision to end it.
Which brings me to one of those questions without a right answer:
“Does any human have the right to end his or her life?”
The issue of suicide is a controversial issue. Is it wrong or right? Why does it carry such a stigma? Why do some societies criminalize it? If one has a right to live, should that same right not pertain to death?
You might feel strongly about it being right or wrong but your point of view is not inviolate and that is the aim of this exercise. To present a stand unlike the conventional which sees suicide as a very bad thing, even criminal.
Surely, there are diseases of the mind, like depression, that cause one to think of ending it all. Since one is not of sound mind, it can be argued that that is an exception.
On the other hand, the desire to live is such a strong phenomenon that very few people, who have all their mental faculties intact, think of ending it all.
The WHO estimates that about 1 million people die from suicide each year (the world’s population is 7.7 billion and is growing by about 83 million people a year).
The majority of these people are thought to have major depression but also substance abuse like alcoholism, financial woes, debilitating disease and societal pressure can lead to suicide. The highest number of suicides are seen in Europe and Asia (Lithuania and Japan come to end) with Africa having the least. This raises another question that I ponder about often: Do Africans value life or are we just afraid of death.
Anyway, I digress. Let us go back to the matter at hand.
This means that those who are not depressed or suffering from other mental illnesses who commit suicide do so because they cannot take their lives at that point in time anymore. They do not see any way out and see death as the only way out.
As ill-informed as that decision might be, is it not in their right to do so?
Should a patient with terminal cancer, with metastases all over, who suffers indescribable pain not have the right to end it? If that person continues to live in pain and suffering, what does that achieve?
A slave who jumped off a slave ship to his death in the churning waters of the Atlantic during the Middle Passage saved himself the horrors of bondage that befell Africans in the New World. Did that slave not have the right to do so?
A banker who loses it all when the market crashes and thus jumps out of a 30th-floor window to his demise chooses death over life. In much the same as the Japanese pilots of the Tokubetsu Kōgekitai who flew kamikaze missions against Allied targets in the Pacific during WW II did. They all at that point in time had a similar mantra in mind like the quote from 1775 that has been immortalized and is seen as one of the catalysts of the American War of Independence. Words uttered by Patrick Henry but probably written by William Wirt:
“Give me liberty, or give me death!”
Most people respect that and see valor and patriotism in those words. However, how is that different from the other scenarios I painted earlier?
The African slave leaping into the churning waters of the Atlantic made a decision to die rather than be in bondage. The terminal cancer patient wants death rather than pain.
The banker might well have screamed, “Give me wealth or give me death” and the kamikaze pilot, “A victorious Japan or death”.
What underlines all these scenarios is a freedom to make that choice between life and death. Society may hail one but condemn the others. Why?
The issue of suicide has bedeviled mankind forever. Camus put it best when he wrote, “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide”.
In ancient Greece, in Massilia and Ceos, a man who could convince the magistrate why he needed to die was handed a cup of Hemlock and bid farewell.
Pliny the Elder wrote:
“Life is not so desirable a thing as to be protracted at any cost. Whoever you are, you are sure to die, even though your life has been full of abomination and crime. The chief of all remedies for a troubled mind is the feeling that among the blessings which Nature gives to man, there is none greater than an opportune death; and the best of it is that everyone can avail himself of it.”
Sure there were also philosophers like Camus, Kant, Locke, and Satre as well as writers of Christian-leaning and the Church itself who opposed and continue to oppose suicide greatly. Hobbes’ position is probably the most revealing. He claims that natural law forbids everyman “to do, that which is destructive of his life, or take away the means of preserving the same.” Breaking this natural law is irrational and immoral.
Religions like Hinduism support suicide while Christians abhor it, citing the suffering of Jesus on the cross as an example of how tough life can be and how we are called to bear it.
However, even Jesus prayed for strength to carry that cross and ultimately made a conscious decision to bear it. So, if one cannot carry this burdensome cross, can one not just end it. To cull from Herodotus quote, “Does death not become for man a sought-after refuge, when life is burdensome?”
Maybe the person who looks at life, finds it unbearable and decides to end it does not commit “the greatest act of cowardice” but rather uses his or her most hallowed right – the right to live or not. The right to be a person or a memory.