A Right to Die

 

Two Belgian twins had spent their entire lives communicating to each other through sign language, as both were deaf. Then they received the news that they would soon become blind. Already separated from everyone and everything by a soundless barrier, soon, the entire world would disappear from them. Any communication with any human being, any animal, anything in the world would be cut off suddenly by an interminable blackness.

So they chose to commit suicide.

Maybe they died with dignity, escaping a life that would have denied them of it. The brothers discussed the issue with family and assured them that the decision was the correct solution to the issue. They took their final breaths after having one final conversation over coffee in a hospital hallway.

There’s something entirely logical about the whole business of assisted suicide, perhaps unusual for an insane process. Mostly the act is a last ditch effort intended to relieve a poor soul from dreadful suffering, at least that’s what Dr. Kevorkian would argue. These people are beyond medical help; maybe they’re in pain; their condition has denied them their dignity.

There are always appeals to dignity in this argument, made by both sides.

Suicide is undignified because it prevents a person from continuing to reap the joys of life. Or suicide in some circumstances protects a person’s dignity by preventing that person from continuing to live a fruitless and pained existence.

And I couldn’t even give you a definition of the word. What is dignity? And why do I want it?

Even asking those questions might be enough to get you a 72 hour supervised stay in the local psychiatric ward.

But it makes sense that suicide is so commonly associated with insanity. I look forward to perusing the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual and counting how many times “suicide” or “suicidal thoughts” or “suicide attempts/behaviors” pops up in the symptoms sections of illness descriptions.

It takes some kind of extenuating circumstance to explain suicidal tendencies, and suffering from some chemical imbalance in the brain or some kind of psychological insanity is the most obvious explanation. And it’s crazy in this incomprehensible and indescribable way. Suicide – wanting death more than life – is like cliff-diving into some unknown ocean, except the ocean you are diving into is completely black and, when your cliff-diving, the percentage chance that you will die is significantly less than one hundred. But even that analogy is incapable of invoking that same gut reaction, that same immediate rejection that the thought of suicide invokes in society.

We think that there is something inherent to human life that makes it special, that makes it worthwhile. We like to think that. Maybe we need to think that. Any challenge to that core tenant of human existence is rejected by the mind like broccoli is spat out by a picky toddler. It’s gross, and it’s disgusting and there’s no way – absolutely no way – that we could ever think any otherwise. This inherent worth or meaning (or maybe even dignity) associated with human life is so valuable that it overrides all other concerns. Protecting it, for some, is so important that those who think or act otherwise are thrown in jail and vilified.

But can there be proper justification for wanting to commit suicide or choosing death? Maybe extreme pain is a necessary condition for the choice. But even though they weren’t terminally ill or suffering from extraordinary pain, those Belgian twins thought they made the right decision, and I don’t think that it would be difficult to argue that they had good reason to or, at the very least, that they shouldn’t be considered mentally ill for following through with ending their lives.

Is it possible to reject the premise that simply being alive is a valuable experience? Does losing one’s eyesight and hearing still leave a human being with a valuable and meaningful experience? Imagine being completely cut off from the entirety of the world around you except what you can feel with your hands and feet. You can’t speak, you can’t read or write, you can’t travel or care for yourself. Is that a “dignified” life? Is that even a life?

What’s more insane: coming to the conclusion that life is not worth living or living a life already deemed not worth living?