But those two characters taught us a lot about suffering. Where it comes from and how to face suffering with courage and not just throw your morals out the window once you have the glimpse of even future suffering.
Maybe it’s just me, but I see every moment as the best it can possibly be. Whether I’m seeing this gorgeous sunny blue sky today or I’m 95 years old with terminal cancer. It’s a miracle to be born and to exist in this world, it’s extremely rare. And I want to live every last second of it. Maybe that’s what’s upsetting me about reading what he wrote. If you just try to grab the good times in this life and use that as a goal you’re going to be severely disappointed.
How is my hypothetically deciding to end my own suffering “morally bad”? I don’t owe suffering from a terminal illness to anyone.
Your calculation for what you will suffer to enjoy another day of life may be different than mine and that’s fine.
Because you’re saying that life is not worth living at some point. But that’s just my level of morality. I think life is so rare and precious that I do not even want to miss the suffering that’s given to me.
Glad for you. I really hope you never come into a situation that you wish for your life to end. But please take into account, that other people might experience life different at times.
No one has a death wish, because things are a bit rough sometimes. But if life is constant hell and when there is no hope anymore. Then you wish for death to release you.
(Also do you know what latestage cancer can mean? Constant pain that does not go away, ever.
And Jesus might have been a real person, but that he choose crucification out of his own choice is very much part of the mythological story that other people told after his death)
When you deal with suffering every day, you come to have a different relationship with it that is, if you don’t take the view of material list and instead follow the past of the several spiritual leaders who dealt with suffering and understood it in a way that is much deeper than “suffering is bad”.
Christ test there is much more complicated than he wanted to die because he was suffering. Christ chose his suffering and his death as a sacrifice for other people. Christ did not die by his own hands, but from others. He chose peace and love over his own suffering and death. It’s one thing to die because you have no hope and it’s another thing to die to give Hope to everyone else.
The man in the original article, he died for nothing. He died for his own selfish desires. He died because he thought it was embarrassing to be old.
Hanging in there with cancer? Sure, fight it and deal with the pain. Dementia? No, please end it. The two aren't even close in comparison, cancer feels easy and merciful.
But this is what happened with the man in the original article. He had a sense of himself that he wanted preserve. And that to me as a sickness, a spiritual sickness, greediness almost.
> you really can’t suffer if you have no sense of self
... there's no way to know if this is true.
No, it sounds like you would be disappointed in that scenario. Many would be elated to get through this hell-hole relatively joyous & unscathed.
I see your last paragraph as naive, and cruelly dismissive of what true suffering is. It is possible to be in a place where the only life you have left is excruciating and intolerable. You are in a privileged position to have never seen a beloved family member die a slow and terrible death, or to have had a serious prolonged health event and have the moment of realization that for some people, your horrible weeks of insufferable illness are their entire experience of life, and wonder if you'd even want to live if that was all you had left.
can I say this is not true without going into details?
is it because I had insight of my suffering that were different than yours that you don’t believe me?
"It's going to get better" is a reasonable position. "It's not going to get better, but still keep hanging on while you experience intolerable torment for all the time you have left, however long it may be" is sadistic and sick.
