Question : Who decides when to end a life?
Answer : NOT the life-bearer
You, dear reader, might wonder what has suddenly sparked this subject. It is the shocking, self-inflicted demise of a person whom I considered to be a rational, jovial and ambitious human being. I do not know the reason for this extreme step, but I am unable to come to terms with the fact that such an individual can actually go through with such a preposterous and callous act.
There cannot be a greater gift to mankind than the ability to perform any action at will - the freedom to make a choice, to love and be loved, to travel this beautiful world, to embark on a passionate dream, or to do nothing at all. And there cannot be a more blatant disregard for that pristine gift than to throw it away in a mindless, impulsive error of thought.
Also, our life is not ours alone to give away. We are just the bearers of this asset; it is much more a property of everybody else who has a stake in our existence. And since we are not the complete, rightful owners, we have no right to discard it without consent.
Of course, life is not always the joyride that we wish for, but a wave of crests and troughs. While we enjoy the crests, we often tend to resign in the troughs. I have travelled through fairly deep trenches, and I am sure so have you. All it takes to make our way up is a little courage, and a little faith. It is the plethora of such high and low experiences that is the basis of life. There cannot be perfect order in anything worldly; if there is, we would cease to exist - that is a fundamental law of nature.
The prolific inventor Edison had a series of failures - professional and personal, before he could finally invent the electric bulb. If he had given up because of any one of those failures and chosen the quick escape route of death, he could never have touched the billions of lives that thrive today on his inventions.
If you ever find yourself harboring the slightest "self-destruct" ideas, perhaps you can remember these words. And who knows, it might help save a million more lives someday in the future.
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