A Purpose to Keep Me Going

Last Monday, after reaching to grab my phone and turn off the alarm, I opened Twitter to see what might be happening out there in the world while I was asleep.  

After scrolling through my feed a moment or two I was just about to log off and get up when one last scroll brought up a tweet that stopped me.  

It wasn’t from anyone I followed.  The message said something like, “This will be my last tweet.  After this, I’m going to take the injection that will end my life because MS has won.”  

I clicked on the posting and started scrolling through the thread.  There were hundreds of replies.  Maybe thousands.  A lot of messages of support.  One reply asked her to say hello to their pet dog that had “passed over the rainbow bridge” a few days before.  A lot of them were in German and were unintelligible to me.  It turned out the woman lived in the Netherlands.  

One person asking the woman making the original tweet, “How can you do something like that?”  Her question was one of practical ability.  Where she lived it was illegal.  Several people replying to her tweet said that the Netherlands, where the woman lived, and Switzerland, as another example, had laws that were more “humane” and supportive of people’s decisions to end their lives on their own, which checks to make sure there was no abuse involved.  

I had been asking myself the same question.  “How can you do something like that?”  But my question was based more on a philosophical point of view.  

I will stipulate, here and now, that I have never been in such pain, or such mental anguish, that I’ve seriously considered thoughts of suicide.  But having said that, I can say with certainty that my instinctual reaction is to reject such an option.  I’m definitely in the “Rage against the dying of the light” camp, to use Dylan Thomas’ word on the matter.  Maybe if I go through something that the woman who sent the tweet had gone through I might reconsider.  But my reaction to that is to state that I hope I don’t go through something like that.  Not just because of how horrible it would be to go through something heretofore unthinkably horrible, but because I want to keep wanting to live.  

As I was reading the string of responses to the initial tweet, I began to think of reasons someone might choose to die.  The first example that came to me was a fictional one.  The movie, The Europa Report, about a scientific expedition to the Jovian moon referenced in the title to see if it sustained life in the ocean of liquid water beneath its ice cap. 

SPOILER ALERT - I’m going to give away the ending of the movie in the next three paragraphs.   

In the final scene, as the landing craft is sinking into the depths of Europa’s ocean, the last surviving crew member does something that I didn’t understand at first.  She goes down to the panel that controls the lander’s airlock and opens the airlock doors.  Freezing water begins rushing into the craft as she climbs back up ahead of it. 

As well as an alien creature.  You see it riding the torrent of water flooding the craft.  It turns and rises up toward the camera.  You get a glimpse of tentacles thrashing about, and a circle of what appear to be bioluminescent eyes, right before the feed from the craft cuts off.  

What follows are voiceovers of people back on Earth that had seen that final transmission from the lander.  They are eulogizing the last crew member and her “bravery” in making the decision to open the airlock and provide proof that their expedition did what it had gone there to do, discovery life on that moon.  

Remembering the movie, I then remembered a similar, real-life example.  The Terra Nova expedition lead by Robert Scott, to reach the South Pole.  Those that are familiar with the expedition, and the death of Robert Scott and the other members of his expedition, might not be aware that his expedition had a scientific purpose: To find fossil evidence that the Antarctic Continent existed and was once connected to South America and Africa.  

It was prompted by early criticism of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.  It had been pointed out that there existed fossils of a time of tree, actually more closely related to ferns, called “Glossopteris.”  Fossilized samples of this plant had been found both in Africa and South America.  This was used as evidence that Darwin’s theory, as having identical plants in such distant locations, would indicate that they had not evolved naturally as he proposed, but must have been created as part of some design.  Darwin replied that, for his theory to be true, there must be a continent or land mass south of both Africa and South America that had once been connected to both.  

This was news to the world.  At the time Antarctica was thought to be a giant sheet of ice over water, similar to what’s found at the North Pole.  It was this suggestion that something else was there that started the surge in Antarctic exploration.  

And Robert Scott discovered it.  On his first expedition, called the Discovery Expedition, he found the plateau on which the South Pole is located that showed there was land beneath the ice.  On his next expedition, Terra Nova, returning from the South Pole after the Norwegian explorer, Amundsen had reached it first, Scott diverted the expedition to dig for fossils at what his geologist had decided was a good place to dig.

The geologist was correct.  Amongst the fossils they collected were samples of Glossopteris.  But the decision to dig for them proved to be a fatal one.  The time spent digging allowed a storm to catch up with them.  It slowed, and eventually stopped their progress.  They ended up starving and freezing to death.  The fossil proof they dug up would be found by the expedition come to find them some nine months later.  Scott is regarded as a hero to science.  

Then, after remembering these two examples, I remembered something much more recent.  The soldiers of Ukraine fighting to keep their country free from the tyranny that Vladimir Putin would impose if he gets his way.  Or any soldier that has fought to defend their country.  Or any fireman or rescuer that has risked their life to save someone else.  This situations are not ones where someone is choosing to die, per se, but where someone is putting their lives at risk for some purpose that they have calculated is worth as much or more than actively protecting their lives.  

It was with these examples in my mind that I finally stopped my scrolling and got out of bed.  I headed to my writing desk.  I had scheduled myself to work on the rewrite to my fantasy novel, specifically to write the background story as to why the main character is betrayed by his older brother (hopefully I’ll be able to create a chance for you to read it soon).  

As I sat down to write, though, another thought took hold of me.  That I needed to write a letter to the congressmen that represent in the government, as well as one to the President himself.  

I have been following the war in Ukraine very closely.  I regard it as the front line in the most recent effort to supplant democracy with authoritarianism.  I’ve been meaning to express my opinion formally to someone who could possibly be moved by my opinion, or at least by the weight of numbers of similar opinions that I was adding my voice to.  Every weekend, with each news update, I told myself, “I need to say something.  I need to do something.  I need them to do something.”  And each weekend so far things would conspire to prevent me from doing so.  

But Monday morning was different.  When I sat down I felt that I HAD TO write that letter.  And I did.  It ended up being 391 words.  A little less when I edited it to fit into the text box to email my senators, which was smaller than the others.  I then sent it to my representative, both senators, and the President.  I checked the boxes saying I didn’t need a reply when they were then.  I got an email from the Office of the President, with a scanned copy of Joe Biden’s signature on it, telling me about how concerned he was about the situation.  

Glad to hear that, Joe.  But what I’m writing about now was that impulse to finally do what I was going to do “sometime.  Sometime soon,” that wasn’t getting done.  

I think it had to be that purpose.  The purpose that the fictional scientist in the Europa Report had, which was mirrored in the real purpose Robert Scott had when he made the decision to stop and dig for fossils.  The purpose the soldiers in Ukraine have to ensure their country remains free.  While I’ve been writing this entry, an unknown number of them have died already trying to fulfill that purpose.  

I want to make clear that I am not questioning the decision made by the woman whose tweet I read.  I tried to go back and find that account, that tweet, but none of my searches turn it up.  It’s already lost in the flood of noise washing through the Twitter-funnel online.  She had her own circumstances to contend with.  I have no basis on which I can either praise or condemn her decision.  It was hers to make.  

But, I do hope…  I do want to do all I can for myself, to find a purpose that will be strong enough, deep enough, overwhelming enough, for me to choose to keep carrying on, despite how hard it may be to do so.  I think I will live a better life for myself if I do.