(Plough) – As laws permitting medically assisted death advance, how will we learn to accept diminishment rather than kill ourselves?

I share this experience with Jens because I have been mulling over a parenting challenge, and I think the way I let Jens down that day points to a solution. As I have seen the slow advance of laws permitting medically assisted death, I have begun wondering how I can raise my children to grow into the sorts of people who would rather choose to endure the painful, humiliating loss of health and bodily function than to die by suicide. I believe that part of the answer to this parenting challenge is found by examining the problem of polite dishonesty when it comes to the ways we burden and are burdened by one another. These two experiences – being a burden and being burdened – are not the same, but for any who will resist the seduction of suicide as an escape from the reality that human life is burdensome, being a burden and bearing burdens must be taught and practiced. And I believe the first step is overcoming the polite dishonesty that denies people are burdens at all. (Read More)