more than just an analysis.

quite a few brain cells were sparked during my rhetorical criticism class today. after spending the majority of the one hour and a half class analyzing a toronto star article about Marcel Tremblay, the 78-year-old ottawa man who committed suicide last friday, it seemed to have left a slightly unusal and unsettling afterthought in my mind, even until now. before class ended, the prof asked us to write a response to the article - whether or not we thought Tremblay's actions were justifiable or not.

it took me a while to figure out what to write on paper... the article had left me baffled, which soon led to slight confusion, and perhaps may have even caused a slight struggle between my Christian beliefs and my own understanding of humanity.

i had been taught that suicide is wrong in God's eyes - and it's always made sense to me that to take your own life is a selfish decision, taking the "easy way out". it says in Galatians 6:7-8: "Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life", meaning that by "playing God" with your own life, you would indeed be making a mockery of God.

but then there's the other side of the coin - being human, we have free will, and with free will, we have the choice to exercise it through the decisions we make in our lives. i tried thinking through Tremblay's perspective, and i felt a genuine sympathy and compassion towards his reasons for taking his own life. i tried to imagine what it would be like to be a frail 78-year-old man who had been fighting terminal lung complications, not knowing when he'd breathe his last breath, constantly worrying about how painful his last gasp of air would be, and to then think of how much of a burden he'd be to his family or friends while waiting for that day to come.

... and then i realized that i could never really place myself in Tremblay's shoes. his life-perspective would probably never be something i could understand.

as i continued to dwell on it, the sympathy and compassion that i was feeling gradually transformed into saddness and fear.

i'm not really sure where i'm going with this blog, because even now my mind is just a mesh of so many questions and thoughts that even i can't seem to organize into one set thought...

as for my response to the article - i'm still unsure. do i personally think that what he did was wrong? perhaps. were his actions justifiable? only God knows.

i guess sometimes it can be so easy to be suaded into seeing the the greys of this world, and forget that reality is as simple as black and white.

... just something to think about, i suppose.