Around three years ago, on a dark night, I stood on a ledge of my hostel and decided to jump and end my life. It wasn’t a decision borne of being fed up with life; rather it was an attraction towards the concept of death. I had pushed myself into a period of gloom and the idea of death was just the logical culmination of it. Obviously, I did not jump. Ever since then, I have loved life for what it is. I write this not to draw attention to myself, but because I noticed recently that I have moved to a place where I could talk about quite objectively, while my loved ones who know about this still cannot come to terms with it. At that time, I had thought that it was my decision, something that affected my life and my future course. I should say that this piece is not in support of or against suicide, but merely trying to make sense of various factors involved in it.
This brings me to the first vital question. Where does my decision become irrational? If you are a person who is well informed and perfectly capable of taking decisions in life, shouldn’t you be entitled to decide when you should end your life? The autonomy which is bestowed upon us by society to carry out our lives as we may please, to have choices when it comes to the most mundane of affairs, is taken away in the case of the termination of our biological functioning by our own hand. It hardly seems fair in an individualistic way. If you are a person with a sane mind, capable of differentiating between the different shades of grey, shouldn’t you be allowed that liberty of choice? There is this constant impression upon us that human life is sacred. Religion, state and family tying us to this concept of self preservation, no matter what the choice of the individual.
It is on this note that I do not quite comply with the justifications for two other phenomena, which essentially features under the same category of ‘sacred life’ and simply making suicide look like the black sheep of the family. One is killing for self defense and the other is suicide as a moral obligation. Let us consider killing for self defense. How is my life any better than yours, in case you try to kill me and I succeed in stopping you from killing me by ending your life? One could easily say that survival instinct is basic and we have a moral obligation to keep on living. Let us take the second case, one of suicide as a moral obligation. People blowing themselves up for religious or political agenda, soldiers giving up their lives in the name of patriotism, etc. When you compare and contrast these two, it is obvious that there is one element that is missing from the case of suicide-social sanction. Though they are contradictory in behaviour and both are murder in their naked forms, they are normalized in society. It may be due to the fact that suicide is contradictory to the evolutionary necessities of survival and a collective coherence, which are represented by the above two behaviours. Nevertheless the explanation hardly justifies this moralistic tug of war in this age where personal liberties are greatly cherished and valued.
But when we probe further on this sacredness of life, there is clearly a gap between the definition and the realistic conception of life. Life should encapsulate not just the biological being but also the positive well being of the person. If the society is not able to provide the person with enough physical and psychological amenities for welfare, if the person is not able to emotionally utilize the facilities available to him/her for whatever reason, shouldn’t the person be allowed to decide whether or not to continue living? It seems highly unreasonable to not take into account the preference of the individual to life. We could put forth the utilitarian argument that the person has a social obligation to be alive and contribute to the society’s progress and by committing suicide; he/she is depriving the society of his/her part of labour, thus creating a gap in its fabric and that his/her talents, skills and knowledge are vital in their own ways in the social evolution. Emotional attachments come under the same classification more or less. Unlike me, I am pretty sure that those who think about or have committed suicide must have mulled constantly over the anguish and the consequences that their deaths will bring on their families.
Love brings us to a primary characteristic of the ‘right to noninterference’. To what extent should a person be left alone? If a person is depressed or otherwise mentally imbalanced, hassled by the toils of the day, the stress building up to a breaking point, should there be no help offered? Doesn’t matter where the interference is from, as long as it is positive. Usually, the impulse towards suicide is short lived, ambivalent and influenced by environmental factors combined with personality traits tipping the scale to one side further and further till it hits rock bottom. There should be a counter balance involved which may not be appreciated by the individual at that time, but still efficient enough to stop the imbalance at a particular degree and bring the person back.
There is this wrong notion amongst people who have suicidal tendencies that their loved ones will eventually get over their death, forget and move on. Having observed people whose loved ones have committed suicide and having been at the end which inflicted pain, even though to a lesser degree, I can confidently say that that ‘moving on’ is different from what the person who wants to commit suicide thinks. Time heals only in the sense that the focus shifts to newer things and more pressing issues at hand rather than grief. Guilt is a dominant emotion amongst the loved ones. The person might think that since it is a personal decision and there is only one life at stake in the long run, there is no need for others to feel responsible for his/her death or attempt. But I have seen different variants of guilt, ranging from going mad to extreme denial when it comes to taking responsibility. So, when one life ends, many end along with it, may not be the same as physically ceasing to exist.
But, ultimately, the choice should be personal, deeply thought out with the knowledge that this ‘to be or not to be’ is a permanent solution to what could be a temporary problem.
No comments:
Post a Comment