There are many people in our time and region who think about the end of their life, and especially about the circumstances in which they want a doctor to end it. They talk about suffering, dignity, and fear of losing control.
You say you want to die with dignity. Why should dignity disappear when strength disappears? Why should dependence be undignified? Why should confusion, illness, or old age stand outside life?
It is the illusion that if you lose any of your faculties, you lose your dignity. We don’t even know what dignity entails. Is it a fixed state that slowly disappears?
These arguments seem to imply that some forms of life are beneath dignity, whereas I see dignity as belonging to life itself, not to a particular level of health, independence, or control.
I have less of a problem with people who reason their way to suicide because of unrelievable pain or unavoidable depression, but planning your own suicide by crossing off some boxes because you believe that what comes after these boxes is not life sounds…
We live in a time and place where we have the illusion of controlling our own lives. It starts young, when you choose a career, decide what color hair your boyfriend should have, and decide where you are going to live. Superficially, our lives seem to be a constant string of decisions of our own design, but unbeknownst to most, life is a constant stream of coincidences. You are just lucky that the car had an accident a few seconds later when you crossed the street; otherwise, your life would have gone a totally different way than you thought you had planned it.
You live to prepare yourself for the circumstances you encounter, and if you are lucky enough, or brave enough, you will learn to embrace fate, even if it means years spent staring at a ceiling on your deathbed.
