A life less lived..

Quite a while back, I remember writing about people who, despite their circumstances, continue to plod on through life, not giving up on it. I ended it with a quote from ‘The Hurt Locker’ by James ‘Everyone’s a coward about something.‘ I added that sometimes it’s life, and sometimes it’s death.

I was reminded of this when I read about the Goa couple‘s suicide and another one closer home – a person I knew, if only for a few months – one which came as a rude shock. In the first case, Anand Ranthidevan and his wife Deepa took a very deliberate and seemingly well thought through decision to end their lives, planned down to the last detail. The label I’ve heard several times in conversations – real and virtual – is disturbed. I don’t subscribe to that, it’s probably the reaction from a society which just cannot accept that people without any troubles could really make a conscious decision to end their lives. I can actually identify with it because in conversations with friends, I’ve toyed with the idea of driving off a cliff at say 55-60, when a life has been lived fully.

But just like the question in the earlier post – why people continued to plod on, I am interested in the flip side too. Why do people choose to end it? In situations where the individual is troubled by something – physical/emotional/under the influence of a drug, there is probably a point where he/she feels the problem cannot be solved, and chooses to end the journey.

The Goa incident is different because the individuals were in their prime, at least in terms of age. When sports personalities, actors etc retire at the ‘right’ time, they sometimes use the ‘Why retire now vs Why don’t you retire now’ line. Can one think of life that dispassionately? Probably, if one knew what lay after, or if one didn’t care, or thought it wasn’t worth the effort. Or when one felt that one’s existence didn’t matter to anyone but the self. Or maybe there when there was no problem worth solving. What do you think?

until next, life </span>