It’s Sunday, 2.24am (GMT +8 hours). Time is moving so fast that it does not seem like it’s about to slow down anytime soon.

Or have we been shortchanged? Are we getting a full day or or 24 hours or 1,440 minutes or 86,400 seconds? Or has second lost perhaps a 1,000 of second, thus ultimately making each day shorter?

24 hours being the standard size of day is something we all equally have. Most of us don’t have to worry about how to fill our days up. What we fret about more is how little time we have to do all those things we have to do or plan to do. When somehow, the magic of modern technology helps us in our daily lives and helps organise our time, freeing us to have some free time in each day. Some have half hour, some an hour, others may be fortunate enough to perhaps get a couple of hours; that they never had in a very long, long time, now they’ve got it.

Then, you will hear this somewhat common phrase, “no choice”. That cannot be further from the truth than it already is. Everything we do or not do, is a choice. Most people omit that “not doing anything” is a choice. In fact, making a choice is a choice in itself.

We all have a past. We’ve made choices that maybe weren’t the best ones. None of us are completely innocent.

We all get a fresh start each and everyday to be a better person than we were yesterday. We have to work towards that.

So, yeah, life is tough. No one said it was going to be easy. Welcome to the real world.

Then I came across this news on the net:

“

[Zoraya ter Beek, 28, expects to be euthanized in early May. 

Her plan, she said, is to be cremated.

Ter Beek, who lives in a little Dutch town near the German border, once had ambitions to become a psychiatrist, but she was never able to muster the will to finish school or start a career. She said she was hobbled by her depression and autism and borderline personality disorder. Now she was tired of living—despite, she said, being in love with her boyfriend, a 40-year-old IT programmer, and living in a nice house with their two cats. 

She recalled her psychiatrist telling her that they had tried everything, that “there’s nothing more we can do for you. It’s never gonna get any better.” 

At that point, she said, she decided to die. “I was always very clear that if it doesn’t get better, I can’t do this anymore.”

“I’m a little afraid of dying, because it’s the ultimate unknown,” she said. “We don’t really know what’s next—or is there nothing? That’s the scary part.”

Ter Beek is one of a growing number of people across the West choosing to end their lives rather than live in pain. Pain that, in many cases, can be treated. 

Typically, when we think of people who are considering assisted suicide, we think of people facing terminal illness. But this new group is suffering from other syndromes—depression or anxiety exacerbated, they say, by economic uncertainty, the climate, social media, and a seemingly limitless array of fears and disappointments. 

“I’m seeing euthanasia as some sort of acceptable option brought to the table by physicians, by psychiatrists, when previously it was the ultimate last resort,” Stef Groenewoud, a healthcare ethicist at Theological University Kampen, in the Netherlands, told me. “I see the phenomenon especially in people with psychiatric diseases, and especially young people with psychiatric disorders, where the healthcare professional seems to give up on them more easily than before.”

In 2001, the Netherlands became the first country in the world to make euthanasia legal. Since then, the number of people who increasingly choose to die is startling. 

By Rupa Subramanya, The Free Press, April 1, 2024]

From the onset, I do not want to judge, only question her decision. Why sell out on life so easily? Why give up what others are fighting to have, even if it is for one more day?

I cannot begin to even know how Zoraya feels. From the write-up above, it seems that she has based her decision on how she feels, her mental health.

The statement that her psychiatrist made “that there was nothing else that could be done for her” is very surprising. I think that she should seek help from another or other psychiatrists.

Her environment. The people in her circle, her city – they could have all had an influence on her. I believe that she has not explored all options that could be available to her. She has to check those options out.

Zoraya may be all alone (and she possibly feels that) in her quest to find the right answers to her questions. She may not get all answers right or the answers that she is looking for but she should never give up on looking for answers. Over time, the answers she may get get could evolve to better answers.

Now, it is no longer just about a person suffering from a life threatening terminal illness, a person who can’t live with the physical pain from the illness, a person who is brain dead (a vegetable)… It’s, “I don’t feel like living anymore”.

“Call the executioner. He or she makes house calls.” They aren’t doctors. Doctors are meant to save lives, not snuff them out. I wonder if what they are doing is from the bottom of their hearts, for humanity, to preserve humanity by killing them. Are these executioners doing it for free or do they charge a pretty penny?

She wears a medical necklace that says, “DO NOT RESUCITATE”. Which normal person who sees a person collapse in a public place, is going to stand by and not do anything? Even if he or she has read the message on her necklace? They won’t want to be party to any suicidal act.

People are literally fighting to have a moment extra in life.

Life is not a thing. It is a passage that is fluid. We just need to see how beautiful it is. Even in our darkest of times, we need to embrace this platform, this stage, if you may; to do our dance, our act from the time the curtains go up when we are born to the time they come down when our time is up. Nobody can perform your life’s performance better than you.

Giving up so easily on life. Life does not give up on you so easily.

Zoraya Ter Beek looks like a nice lady. I hope that people in and around The Netherlands can reach out to her and convince her to catch that twinkle of life. I do hope that readers of Leatherpotato.com from over 80 countries will encourage Zoraya to give herself another chance.