Life and Death~ II

Because ultimately we live for others, just as much as we live for ourselves — through our work and lives — in our professions and at home. We are constantly spending every bit of our lives, our time and energies thinking about others' well-being. And therefore, our lives can never be entirely ours — our presence, our existence is so intertwined with those of our near ones, and theirs in ours, and that our lives can never be thought of in isolation. And therefore it cannot be our decision to end it either

- SOUMYANETRA MUNSHI The writer is Associate Professor, Economic Research Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata

Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel laureate in Economics, died by assisted suicide (according to Wikipedia, "Assisted suicide, also known as physician-assisted suicide (PAS), is the process by which a person, with the help of others, takes drugs to end their life) on 27 March 2024, three weeks after his 90th birthday, in Switzerland (a country where PAS is legal). In fact he went to Switzerland to die.

He had earlier written an email where he said: "I have believed since I was a teenager that the miseries and indignities of the last years of life are superfluous, and I am acting on that belief. I am still active, enjoying many things in life (except the daily news) and will die a happy man. But my kidneys are on their last legs, the frequency of mental lapses is increasing, and I am ninety years old. It is time to go."

Who are we to decide when it's time to go? Because, after all, our lives are not entirely ours. Had Kahneman's children hugged him closely and made him feel loved and wanted in spite of his ailments, would he still wish to go? Would he still have gone?

Because ultimately we live for others, just as much as we live for ourselves — through our work and lives — in our professions and at home. We are constantly spending every bit of our lives, our time and energies thinking about others' well-being. Poet Sunil Bhandari writes, "Because the fact is that our breath, our life, is also a collective. We are made of the efforts, the hope springs, the heart carvings, the soul bindings, the body cravings, the thought mouldings of all who love and care for us. We start being someone and then are slowly changed and created out of what others see us as. What might start as an opinion, an illusion, starts getting recreated. We then are what we make of ourselves, but are also deeply vented and grooved by what our world thinks of us."