So hard to live

it would depend on my quality of life after the illness or injury, and if i could make such a determination

if i was going to be a vegetable depending on machines or others for survival i'd rather be dead

Death is the enemy. I would take any and all means to fight him off, right to the end.
I would choose a life wracked with pain over no life at all.

I think it's a supremely difficult thing to answer, short of actually having to live the choice.

Sort of like knowing how exactly one would react to being in combat - I don't think anyone really knows until they are there...

I wonder what would be the prime motivation?

Do we fight for our lives or fight to stay with those who we have come to love? Or is it something else entirely?

Re: So hard to live


Take the whole thing with a grain of salt and accept the will of God, whatever it may be.
:wink:

I agree with Snood. You know when you are faced with it.

I'm stubborn, so I know I wouldn't go easily. Yet circumstances might change that.

Re: So hard to live



Like a madman and then some. Recently I was faced with this...yet again! Through a series of incidents starting with a minor accident I landed in the hospital, gained an infection and had the beginnings of renal failure. Of course my kidneys had been acting weird prior to that...

Anyway, I could have said screw this and checked out of the hospital and headed home and dropped dead soon after. That option did not look too appealing to me. I am currently dealing with three times a week dialysis treatments. This involves hour long drives each way (I am still too squeamish to deal with the peritoneal which could be done at home). The point is, I will fight to live as long as I can as long as I am conscious. Life is far too precious to not give it my all...and then some.

There have been a few other close calls within my life where I came close to it all ending (anybody remember that Halloween fall down the flight of stairs?) and it never seemed to me that checking out was a way to go.



Fight to the end with the gloves still on as I am loaded into the casket.

Yeah for me there seemed to be a point of no return which I just didn't quite get to.

You get scared, real scared.
You fight like hell to keep your heart beating.
Then you think about the ones you love and how you can't leave them.
Then you realize you just might not make it this time.
Then you accept whatever might happen in those last few minutes.
Then your brain lights up like Times Square on New Year's Eve as all the neurons seem to fire off at the same time.

Didn't get past this point but I really think it's all about surrender. Not that you lost the fight but it's just time to rest...for now...and let God take care of forever.

Now how much pain is involved in these final steps doesn't diminish their intensity but it does push them deeper into the subconscious.

Careful using that big "g" word around here, Chris - you might risk an attack from the more zealous atheists.

Chris, I also feel that it is about surrender, but not (and here's where I prove Snood right) to that big Gruesome in the sky, but to Reality (the big "R" is also a problem for some A2Kers). My death is inevitable, and the years are going by so fast on my way to it that I feel like I am simultaneously as good as dead yet full of life. But I would prefer to be like "I" was before birth than to exist in a pain or disability so great that I could not function mentally. I was not unhappy before birth so after life is of little concern.
But Snood is right again. I'd have to test my perspective by the actual situation.
I do believe, however, that people are so much braver than they anticipate. I have friends on dialysis and much worse, and they are models for me.

A tricky question, and an interesting one.

For the answer I'd have to agree with most of you that the situation would decide, and that anything I say now would be just words.

What I find interesting is wether you fight because you love life, or because you fear death.

I don't think anyone should really fear death in and of itself. Sure, fear an ugly, gruesome death, in an ideal world I'd rather not be eaten by a shark for instance but how could we truly appreciate life if we didn't die. It's so natural a combination and life is so often that work in progress no matter the stage we're at and that doesn't have to be a bad thing (ie all work no play) but instead just a constant steam of development. The fear of death seems to exist to push us into instinctively fighting it but I also think that maybe it's a much more complex feeling on occasions based around impressions made upon individuals by the society he/she exists in.

Everything is linked, no matter who we are, how old we are, what condition we're in, we can always look to society for an idea of we're we should be heading, what we should have achieved etc. So this means that with impending death for example maybe we're pushed into a brutal, over exaggerated, self evaluation that rarely lives up to standards given. Why do so many people often look back on life with such a sense of frustration? I should have achieved more, I still have time to achieve more, wait, let me do this, I still want to do that, I can still help her, well maybe not this time...

Personally I'd like to believe I'd fight death to the bitter end on principle, rather than fear, I don't like the idea of going down without a fight no matter the circumstance, so acceptance of death can come but only once I'm a spent force etc. Historic accounts of bravery in WW2 for instance, seem to stare something within me as well, the little guy against the big guy, the highly stacked odds, is this not when so many people come out fighting? Is this not when sometimes, we're at our very strongest both physically and mentally?

I would definitely fight to keep alive. After all, I have a family to nag.

Point taken. While I am not a very religious person and not inclined toward any sect, I just don't think you can go through those final steps without a kind of melding with the infinite, whatever that might be.

Yes JL. Not to diminish the semantics in the body of your post, but if we distill the discussion down to one core issue, I would have to say it's all about surrender.

We fight to keep "I" and surrender it only when we realize that it's just not that important. There is no "I" without you; that is, before you are born or after you die.

I think that's a really difficult concept for many people (myself included). "I" am self-aware so how can "I" contemplate something if "I" am disseminated into "everything"?

Have you forgotten about a life after death?

CAUTION: YOU ARE PERILOUSLY CLOSE TO ASKING A SATAN WORSHIPER ABOUT SPIRITUAL MATTERS. IF YOU PROCEED, MANAGEMENT IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY RESULTANT CONFUSION, FRUSTRATION OR FEELINGS OF HOPELESSNESS.

<danger danger!>

I'm with the bad Doktor on this one.

Tooth & nail, all the way down....

(Expecting this life to be the only one makes you appreciate every moment.)

Depends on whether I have a choice or not?

I have always told my family that if something horrific happens...

And machines are the only reason I'm still alive, to pull the plug...let me go.

If I have the choice, I'd agree with the fight, I have two boys that I want the privilege of watching grow, living, loving, and raising families of their own.