My birthday, BTW.  Anyway, on with the sermon.

Several incidents contributed to this epistle.  Firstly there was an article on the news about the BMA (British Medical Association) debating assisted suicide again.  A difficult subject and one on which there is no right or wrong, merely firmly held points of view.  I can certainly sympathise with both sides of the argument and understand how some doctors would view the legalisation of such an action as deeply reprehensible.  And I was very taken with the comment that "the right to die" could easily, with pressure from society not to be a burden, become "the obligation to die".  There are also religions which make suicide a mortal sin (not this one, BTW), it's a very difficult subject with, as I said, no right or wrong answer.  My personal view, shaped to an extent over many years by my parents and grandparents, is that should I want to end my life, that would my choice.  But if I found myself incapable (through illness or whatever) to actually carry out my decision I would hope that someone would be there to assist me.  But that is purely my own view.

And then, on the way home that evening I swallowed a sweet whole.  What, I hear you say, has that got to do with assisted suicide?  You may also say "you silly sod" and laugh, certainly most people I told found it funny.  I didn't.  It stuck in my throat for about one and a half hours, every time I swallowed was agony and I got rather depressed about it.  "What if" I thought "it damages my throat permanently? What if, every time I swallow for the rest of my life, it hurts like this?  What do you do?  Drugs?  Surgery?  Pain management?"  Basically it was how much do you take before you think the unthinkable?  Obviously this shows you what a wimp I am, "Oooh I've swallowed a sweetie, should I top myself?" when other people spend years in wheelchairs doing astonishing things for charity or working out how the universe works.  And I've swallowed a sweet.  But maybe you get the point, it's my choice, everyone has thresholds, everyone is different.

And then the next morning on the way to work, in the space of a few minutes, I saw a dead cat and then a dead fox, obvious roadkill.  And following on from the day before I was moved to think about their possible view on the subject of death.  Was it a nasty shock?  Or a merciful release?  For the cat (if it's living the life of most cats I know) it's probably a bit of a bummer, though you could make a point that the only people suffering at this point are the family who "owned" it (in as much as anyone "Owns" a cat).  For the fox, I felt it may be less clear cut.  What have animals in the wild got to appreciate?  For them there are, as far as I can see, two modes of existence, hunter or prey.  Prey animals (let's use a rabbit as an example) spend their time eating grass, looking over their shoulders nervously and trying to pass on their genes as often as possible until they either don't look over their shoulders enough and get predated or get injured/ill/old and THEN get predated.  Hunters (foxes here) spend their days trying to catch enough food to survive until they get injured/ill/old and starve to death.  Assuming fox hunting or cars don't get them first.....  It doesn't sound a lot of fun to me, either way.  So what is it about life that makes it so determined to carry on, because it certainly does seem determined.  I'm sure that a more religious man than me could at this point make a strong argument for it being the will of god, the spark of the divine, something like that (though whether this hypothetical man would extend that argument to the aforementioned rabbit is debatable), but personally I think I'm going to plump for the selfish gene approach and put it down to blind watchmakers, that way it covers rabbits, foxes, bacteria, people and everything else.....

Unsatisfactory ending I know, if you want absolute certainly and enlightenment go join some fundamentalist sect, heaven knows there are enough of them.

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This site was last updated 07/06/06