All of this conversation about suicide (Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade) has me deep in thought about what it means to honor human sovereignty. I actually think about this a lot because I believe it is foundation to our ability to cohabitate this planet together. Sovereignty is the ability to direct one’s own life. Think about how much that is compromised in daily life by our families and friends, businesses, governments, and cultural expectations. How is your sovereignty compromised?
If you consider the source of most human dramas, both real and imaginary, they are sourced in one person trying to coerce or control another person’s behaviors or actions (which is the definition of violence that I ascribe to). Whether we are aggressive, passive aggressive, and/or manipulative, we find all kinds of ways to prevent the people in our lives from making sovereign choices.
It begins with children. They are usually raised with little to no sovereignty, and so are conditioned from birth to compromise themselves to prevent violence, like the rejection, abuse, withholding, control, or neglect of caregivers.
Due to longstanding religious and psychiatric conditioning, we assume suicide is bad or wrong and tell people to call a number, reach out, get help, etc., and especially that they should feel obligated to suffer living for everyone they would leave behind, without stopping to consider a person’s right to decide for themselves whether they want to live or die. I believe we should live for ourselves rather than each other. Life is hard and the weight of obligation does not make life worth living.
We assume other people are having the same experience of life in their bodies and brains that we are having and then presume to tell others what is right and wrong in their choices. We are forever separated by our contempt for one another and our belief that our rightness diminishes their humanness. What is the freedom we fight for except to have the agency to direct our own lives? If we are to have our freedom to direct our own life, we must allow all others to have their freedom, too.
