They say that life is all about choices and it is also about what you choose to do with your life.
This week’s controversial debate on television is all about people
having the right to choose to end their lives. Over the last few years there
have been many cases of people who have been diagnosed with terminable diseases
and their last few months of their lives have been a nightmare. These
individuals’ illness have caused tremendous amounts of pain and suffering as well
as putting their families through tough and challenging times, both emotionally
and physically, which has resulted in their decision to end their lives sooner
rather than later. It is impossible for anyone to know how these people feel,
this is one of those moments you cannot put yourself in their shoes. I don’t
believe anyone of us could even know what it feels like to be in that situation
and therefore we are unable to make judgments over their decision to finish
their lives. To make matters worse, in some cases the person may even live for a
long time, in pain and suffering both mentally and physically, seeing their
lives deteriorate, loosing movement, that independence we all crave, having to
relay on family members to look after them and seeing your dignity swept away
from you gradually until the day it all ends. So you can imagine why some
people may chose to end it all, right now, rather than suffer through months or
years of this torture. This is also a close subject to me as I saw my own
father go through this for over two years.
I watched in amazement this controversial subject and learned that in
the UK is currently illegal to terminate your own life but you can, however, go
to other countries where it is possible to put an end to your suffering and
rest in peace. This has angered people who want to spend their last moments in
their homeland and not in some strange place they have no connection. My jaw
also dropped when I heard that throughout the years the church has opposed to
this and it’s believed that it is wrong to take your own life, as it is only
God who can decide this. I guess what the church does not take into account is
that not everyone believes in their God! There is always a balance and there
were also some interesting arguments supporting this law, mainly that sometimes
people may not be in the right state of mind and therefore may not know what
they are doing, or they may be push by someone to do it because they have other
motives. All valid arguments that make this a difficult and controversial
subject.
But what attracted me to focus my blog this week on this is not the
actual subject itself but, in my opinion, the meaning behind it; CHOICE!
One thing you cannot take away from anyone is the fact that we all have
the ability to make choices in our lives. Being unable to decide, under the
circumstances described above, if you want to live or die takes away a basic
human right, the right to make a choice, especially with your own life, which
belongs only to you. We make choices every day about our lives, from the moment
we become independent, and that is at a very early stage of our existence. The
moment we can make choices, we do (as a child); “I don’t like vegetables”, “I
want to be a fireman”, “I want to be your friend”. And the more we grow, the
more independent we become and make more choices about our lives (young
adolescence); “I’m moving out’, “I’m going to travel”, “I don’t want to work”, “I
want to marry you”. Soon we discover that life is all about choices.
These choices determine how our lives will shape out. Some times we make
good choices; “I’m going to university to be an engineer”. And some time we
make bad choices; “I shouldn’t have married so young!” Some time it is easy to
choose; “I’m going to travel!” Some times it’s hard to choose; “Should I stay
or should I go?” We also have the power to choose how others affect our lives,
we can let people annoy us or we can chose to ignore them. And we can choose
how we spend our time; you can sit and watch TV all day or go out and have fun.
We even choose our moods; when you get up in the morning you can choose to be
in a good mood or a bad mood. And even our attitude is a choice; we can learn
from mistake and become a better person, or be a martyr and never move on. The
bottom line, its our choice how we live our lives!
For me it is clear what is right and what is wrong with this debate; if
we have the right to make choices throughout our lives which will drastically
affect us and those around us, why are we not given the right to chose how we
end our life if we believe it is better for ourselves and those around us?
There is no difference in any other choices we’ve made, as we made them fully
aware of the consequences of that choice. As long as we have the ability to
sensibly make that choice, it is our life and we do what we think it’s best
with it.
I think the ability to make choices is so powerful and unique to human
beings that it can even change the course of our lives; think about it. I am a
great believer that our existence in this planet is a map on which we draw
along as we make those choices, choosing the direction we are going. Our map
(life) has many routes and each route has a junction (choices). At these
junctions we decide, and this decision in turn takes us to the next road to
follow. The roads don’t have a destination and they always come to a new
junction in which you select a new direction. It’s like a labyrinth, and ever
so often we may find ourselves somewhere where we’ve been before, we took a
wrong turn, but if we are cleaver enough we will not chose that same road again
and try new directions which will hopefully lead us to new places in our
journey. Remember life is a journey, not a destination and even when we get
there, at the end of our lives, we still make choices that affect everything we
leave behind. Those who stay will follow whatever road we chose before we died,
and then they will make their choices on how they go on with what we left
behind. Our lives, these maps, are all intertwined in one big map called life;
the choices we make, the avenues we take at those junctions, affect others
around us in their own journey.
Choose to live your life the way you want to, this is the only thing you
truly own, your life!
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