It is funny how other people are whining about how their parents are making them upset or giving trouble to them. Their parents either want them to want what they want them to want, or live the way they think their children should.
This doesn't seem to be happening to me. In fact, while other parents are telling my friends to stop wanting so much, I get a unending series of questions of whether I want this or that. While my friends are unhappy about what their parents don't allow to have, my mum worries that I'm not having enough.
Life.
I imagine that my friends would occasionally tell their parents that they want a certain thing. In my family, it is the reverse -I tell my mum I don't want many, many certain things. I don't want those seaweed snacks. I don't want a new t-shirt. I don't need a new computer. I don't need a new belt. I don't want just about 99% of what she asks me about.
To some, this must sound absurd. How many times do I hear my friends rejecting an offer to get free stuff from their parents? Never! Yet I do that as a matter-of-course all the time. And if my mum asks me whether I want a new car, I'd say no just the same - I don't and am not interested in a license.
But I wonder if the problem lies within me or my mum. I suspect it is in me. I have never seen a friend who wears a shirt that has been accidentally, partly bleached. I have not met many who do not want to drive a car. And I don't see anyone wearing shorts/bermudas that are worn to a sort of translucence. I have done and am still doing all the above, and more.
When someone whines about troubles with their mothers (never their fathers somehow), I cannot understand how they feel. My mum is too generous, compared to her peers in Singapore. In fact, the only trouble I can ever have with her is that I don't like to talk to her because she believes she will die soon, which is not altogether impossible given her medical history. It gets very morbid when I talk to her, which I sometimes avoid.
Just the above fact alone will totally shut any of the whiners up, if I tell any of them. But I keep this in, simply because these smart people need to learn special lessons the hard way just like everyone else. Life is harsh.
But I, too, believe her days are numbered. Everything I do to make myself seem more independent, is partly to satisfy her. But unlike most people I know, I believe that death is not horrible thing. For some, I understand that life is a burden. It is not wrong to commit suicide, something I dislike Catholicism for. Life is complex, and no one should make sweeping statements when it comes to life. Life is seldom so straightforward, and as such, death can sometimes be a release.
It is not wrong to kill oneself in certain situations. Take for example a cancer patient. Everyone knows it is horrible to die that way, but how many actually knows how a cancer patient dies?
Chronic pain. This is the reason all terminal cancer patients are pumped full of morphine to induce a semi-permanent coma. Cancer patients die in extreme pain, and it is not a fast death. That is, if he or she isn't killed by some other quicker complications before. In such scenarios, I believe Dr Kevorkian is right. People have the right to choose how they die, and if they choose to die in a more comfortable fashion( eg by injection), fuck any religion that vilify suicide.
Because I saw my father's death, I believe that physician-assisted suicide should be legalised. No one wants to end up lying unconscious in a hospital for weeks or months, completely swollen from the heavy doses of medication, knowing you are just waiting to die. And as if your death isn't enough, the hospital places in front of your family the bill for all their services.
In such a case, I don't want world-class medical attention from some bunch of genius doctors who graduated from Harvard or whatever magna cum laude; I want to die with minimal pain!
And together with the obvious fact that Earth's natural resources isn't able to feed our present population, let alone tolerate our expected growth rate, people should worship Kevorkian! Unfortunately, many of his supporters are dead. Obviously.
Well, that was anti-climatic, but I just couldn't hold it in once I thought of it.
"My aim in helping the patient was not to cause death. My aim was to end suffering. It's got to be decriminalized." - Dr Jack Kevorkian
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