I was reading through with a nod, until I reached: "It is also some sort of great irony that at this very moment of avoiding death we are also embracing it..." Whereupon I could not bring myself to accept this false equivalence. It is no irony, but balance. I believe there is a world of difference and suffering between those seeking to cling onto life and those seeking to depart it. Hubris against Dignity.
And since death is freedom for men, isn't it an act of bondage to bar it? It is the Free Will of Ilúvatar, which you mentioned, that binds the right to live inextricably to the right to die. Just as Denethor was condemned for suicide before his duty was carried out, Aragorn forsook his life with the tacit approval of the author, in a way strikingly alike to euthanasia: farewelling his friends and laying down to sleep. He willed his own death as surely as if he had dealt himself the blow.
Thus he reasoned to Arwen, "...ask [yourself] whether you would indeed have me wait until I wither and fall from my high seat unmanned and witless."
I was reading through with a nod, until I reached: "It is also some sort of great irony that at this very moment of avoiding death we are also embracing it..." Whereupon I could not bring myself to accept this false equivalence. It is no irony, but balance. I believe there is a world of difference and suffering between those seeking to cling onto life and those seeking to depart it. Hubris against Dignity.
And since death is freedom for men, isn't it an act of bondage to bar it? It is the Free Will of Ilúvatar, which you mentioned, that binds the right to live inextricably to the right to die. Just as Denethor was condemned for suicide before his duty was carried out, Aragorn forsook his life with the tacit approval of the author, in a way strikingly alike to euthanasia: farewelling his friends and laying down to sleep. He willed his own death as surely as if he had dealt himself the blow.
Thus he reasoned to Arwen, "...ask [yourself] whether you would indeed have me wait until I wither and fall from my high seat unmanned and witless."