But W.V. believes his daughter “is vulnerable and is not competent to make the decision to take her own life,” according to Feasby’s summary of the father’s position.
“He says that she is generally healthy and believes that her physical symptoms, to the extent that she has any, result from undiagnosed psychological conditions.”
Her only known diagnoses described in court earlier this month are autism and ADHD.
Some of this is going to come across nasty, but it’s not, it’s an honest exploration of something worthy of deep analysis and discussion.
Who put you in charge? Who puts anyone in charge? Why should anyone get to decide the arc of someone else’s life? Why should someone else get to dictate the terms of anyone’s life and death?
Whenever I hear someone expressing sentiments like “… with some effort they could live along and fulfilling life”, it puts me in mind of all those busybodies who lament or even disapprove of my choosing labour over post-secondary education because I wasn’t meeting my potential. No, I was meeting my potential just fine, even excelling. I’ve had a very fulfilling life, I just wasn’t doing what others thought I should be doing. I was not being lazy by not putting in “some effort.” I was making choices based on who I wanted to be and how I wanted to live.
What is within us that leads us to demand that others live up to our standards? What is within us that makes it so difficult to see that what is a reasonable effort for one may be an insurmountable obstacle to others?
To get mundane, I find it just about as easy to swim 5k as 2k and 10k isn’t much harder, yet I get the impression that most people think of even 2k as beyond their capacity. Would it not be an insult to their very personhood to just call them lazy, the way you imply that this poor soul is just lazy?
We all have different capabilities and capacities. What is within us that insists that we are the standard by which others must be judged?
Some people cannot find the internal resources to continue. What makes the beating of their hearts so important to us that we ignore their own desires? That insist they fight, even after they have no fight left?
I never said anybody was lazy. It’s the difference between somebody being depressed at home and somebody being depressed being given a gun. It makes the choice of suicide that much easier.
Based on this comment, I suspect that your real intention was to argue for the appropriate supports rather than applying sufficient effort. Fair enough, but let’s more closely examine what you actually said:
You did not say “with the right supports…” you said “with some effort…”
Further, “with some effort” implies that there had been no effort to date.
I appreciate that none of us perfectly express our true thoughts when speaking or writing off the cuff as we do here. If you are now saying that you meant “with the right support”, I accept that without question. But if you actually meant that a suffering person must be expected to make efforts that would challenge the strongest of us, then I stand by my contention that you called them lazy.