WHATEVER that haunting song from M*A*S*H may have claimed, suicide is
not painless. Few fateful decisions are. To take one’s own life can hurt
others grievously. But it may be rational, it may be brave and it may be
right; and even when it is wrong — and it is usually wrong — there is
something noble about this most awesome of decisions which I can respect.
It was uncharacteristic of Mick Hume (November 12) to label a whole range of
agonised and utterly personal decisions with a dismissive “stupid”, “mad”,
“cowardly” or “selfish”. Very different people in very different
circumstances and for very different reasons have throughout history felt
impelled to the same act.
Mick represents a popular view (I think it is the prevalent view in England)
when he scolds those who take their lives, because they make a dreadful
mess. Yes, killing yourself does make a mess. Many acts of courage, some of
them acts of folly too, make a mess. To a certain brush-and-dustpan
mentality, that may be all there is to be said: tut-tut, look how you’ve
hurt those who love you most. But as I curse the delay on the London
Underground caused by a passenger under a train, I also ask myself what
drove him to do this — to do something which I cannot begin to imagine
summoning the nerve to do. The thought occurs to me that perhaps this person
has, in the price he has just paid, earned the right to make us all a few
minutes late for work.
If I examine the rational case for suicide, I know some readers will be upset
by the attempt. They will say that in a populous country such as ours, at
any one time such as this morning, thousands of people, many of them with
the balance of their minds temporarily disturbed, may be contemplating the
case for taking their lives, and so one should never publish anything which
in a few cases might tip the balance.
But if we are governed by an imperative never to write anything which could be
twisted in any mind into a justification for error, we wouldn’t write much.
A cautious censor might have advised Jesus that the declaration “Greater
love hath no man than this: that a man lay down his life for his friends”
was open to misinterpretation; but I am glad he said it. It is the view of
many who work with the Samaritans that a blanket “suicide is simply, always,
unquestionably wrong, so don’t even think about it” discourages anxious
people from seeking help.
To anybody contemplating suicide the advice should surely be that, if you are
in two minds, then decide against. A last and only recourse should be
obvious, there should be no bearable alternative. That one can see arguments
both ways is probably a sign that a final, irreversible solution would be
hasty. People (especially) of a seriously depressive nature should remember
all those dark times in the past when there has been no light, and one has
told oneself it would never return; yet it did; and will return again.
Serious depression of a clinical kind is the worst state in which to
approach such decisions.
You may retort that to contemplate suicide is itself proof of clinical
depression: that nobody of sound mind kills himself. This is the old
Catch-22 get-out by which the Church has rationalised giving a proper
Christian burial to suicide victims, and countless grieving relatives have
comforted themselves that a death was not, in the fullest sense,
self-inflicted because their loved one was not wholly capable of knowing
what he was doing. In many cases that may be true, but not in all. Despair
is not always unreasonable.
Here are three good reasons for suicide: three circumstances in which a
clear-headed decision may be taken in a state of mind which is bleak but not
unbalanced. I do not say that any of these three reasons would usually
justify taking one’s own life: only that they might. They are infirmity,
self-sacrifice and shame.
It is possible to imagine being so tormented or disabled by illness that life
ceases to be worth living. Make all the qualifications you like to that
statement — that a quadriplegic with only a fraction of the normal human
scope for action and interaction may, with love and care, still find
existence positive — and I might accept them all, but still maintain that
pain can be so great and so unremitting, or the prospect of looming
incapacity so wretched, or the loss of a capability which to a particular
individual was life itself so crippling, that each new day can only bring
suffering.
We may say “try to learn to live with it,” or “you may get better” or “you may
find new reasons to live”. We have every right to say this. But the sufferer
has an equal right to respond “no, I do not wish to live with it”, or “my
chances of recovery are too small”, or “I do not seek new reasons to live”.
These responses may be rational. The choice should be his.
A second sound reason for suicide, self-sacrifice, is often allied to
infirmity. I am afraid it is just not honest to claim that wanting to lift a
burden from others is wrong-headed, because others are happy to carry the
burden. Sometimes they hardly can. Old age — often cited — is the worst
reason for suicide, for age comes gradually and knows where it is going, and
we all have time to adjust; but those struck down by illness in an untimely
way may never adjust, and those who care for them may be unable to cope.
Death can be a release not only for the deceased, and I know circumstances
where, whatever the sadness, there was also respect, gratitude and relief.
Though Mick Hume is right that suicide often does cause huge distress to
others, his view that this is an argument for stigmatising suicide is
perverse. If the aura of disgrace and calamity which in our culture
surrounds taking one’s own life means that a kindly intended suicide may
cause tremendous pain, then we should try to lift the stigma. It is the
stigma which causes the pain. Mick then cites the pain as a reason for
intensifying the stigma. This is circular.
Self-sacrifice is not, in our language, a pejorative term, and death can be
the ultimate self-sacrifice. In war, suicide missions are not thought
disgraceful. The story of blinded Samson, bringing the temple down on the
Philistines, was taught to me as heroic. Captain Scott committed suicide.
Laying down your life for others means just that.
And shame can justify suicide. This is not to deny that the shamed may
sometimes be redeemed, may find within themselves the strength to repent and
renew themselves, and start again. But there are sins, and there are
individual sinners, where it is fair to conclude that this possibility is
very, very remote. Ian Huntley judged himself to have no good reason left to
live, and I for one would not try to second-guess him. I can imagine acts of
betrayal or cowardice on my part which so robbed me of self-worth and so
filled me with misery that death would be the only exit. I do not think this
is an ignoble thought. Suicide can be the ultimate apology.
But let me end on a cheerful note, though you may not think it so. Is suicide
not the greatest of all tokens of the primacy of the human will? How shall a
man ever demonstrate with more finality that he is the captain of his soul,
the master of his ship, than by taking it by his own choice on to the rocks?
Self-inflicted death is the ultimate defiance, the one freedom in your life
and mine which nothing and nobody — not even God — can take away.
I have never contemplated suicide and hope I never shall. But to know that I
can — to know that tomorrow I too could make that splendid, terrible
two-fingered gesture to creation itself — is more than life-enhancing: it is
sublime.
