Earlier this week an individual went full wookie. By full wookie I mean he with the the most extreme ends saying that someone doing his job as a paramedic was equivalent of gassing Jews in a death camp.
Here’s the thing. If you want to kill yourself, that’s your business and yours alone. Don’t tell anyone else, just go out back and do it. It may seem cold hearted but by god calling up someone and saying “I’m going to kill myself” is nothing more than a ploy for attention, either in life or death. In death it is done by the guilt caused by those wondering, “Was there anything I could have done to stop them” or even worse, the looks given by family members.
Does someone have a right to take their own life. Yes, that is their decision and their choice. That said, most often suicide is not a rational decision and done out of fear and depression. I have family and friends who have taken their own life and the wake it causes makes me very morally opposed to it. So by god, if you want to kill yourself don’t threaten to do so just do it. Don’t lay a guilt trip on me by calling me up and threatening to do so. Doesn’t mean I agree with their being a law, but the law is there.
If you do call me up you have waved your absolute rights to kill yourself. Why? You decided to involve an outside party. You have decided to involve me. You have no right to force me to be complacent to your plan. You have no right to lay upon me the guilt I will feel every time a family member looks at me for not stopping you.
Do I agree with the fact that we have laws doing all of this, no. Frankly I think Phil’s statements put it better than I could possibly put it myself.
AD’s job boils down to that of a care taker. He could be twice as ineffectual towards people as I am and he still would have had to do what he did. If a person truly understands emotional vampires then they’d realize that he did exactly what the guy wanted him to do, no matter how much the guy pretended to protest.
Even without the law, if you involve me in your plan to head to that undiscovered country who’s borne no traveler returns, I am going to try and stop you. I am going to make sure that this is a calm, rationally thought out decision. Not one made in the heat of the moment of some very bad news because as a friend has said before, “Stuff is stuff.” Stuff can be replaced however a person cannot.
The above isn’t to say I don’t understand why some would want to take their own life. On the contrary, I have seen pain and suffering that I wish upon no other person. Suffering that haunts me and there was nothing that we could do but wait and let life take it’s course as prescribed by the law.
Someone who presents a clear concise rational reason as to why, go ahead, just go out on your own and do it. In fact those who do make it as a rational decision do exactly that. Those who make the threats however are doing anything but. They are as Phil says, emotional vampires. Believe me, it is not a way to make me your friend if you’re not already one. If you are a friend and you make a threat like that, you better be mentally broken because I would assume my friends would know better and just say, “Dude, I need someone to listen than to go full drama queen.”
So the bottom line is this, if you actually want to kill yourself, don’t call me up and tell me you want to. Just go out back and do it. If you’re an attention seeking parasite, then by all means call. If you do don’t be surprised when it turns out just like Ambulance Driver said it would.
TMM is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.
Many know his private name and information however due to the current political climate, many are distancing themselves due to the abandonment of Due Process.
My point exactly!
This is the key point in the whole debate. From a liberty-minded perspective, I have no right to prevent someone from killing themselves if it is a calm, rationally thought out decision. But our job as EMS providers is not to decide whether the person making this decision is being calm and rational about it, and we are not actually qualified to make that determination. Our only job at that point is to get the person to someone who is qualified to do so.