Is dignity about choice?

Some thoughts on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill – the ‘Assisted Dying Bill’ - due to be debated in the House of Commons on Friday, prior to an initial vote.

I appreciate these are sensitive matters and harrowing and heart-wrenching stories abound.

From life’s first cry to final breath, where is dignity to be found?

Is it in the ‘freedom’ to untether ourselves from the hands that hold us? Or is it in the quiet, hard patient love that chooses us, even when we cannot choose ourselves?

For if dignity was lost in the worst of moments, would it be dignity at all?

Am I made to stand alone? Or to lean and rest, to bear and be borne?

Independence? Surely it is amongst the greatest of modernity’s self-flattering myths.

Interdependence? Now surely there is life.

Yes, we are burdens. Limited and in need. But burdens shared are bonds that hold us together.

In this mutual carrying, do we not discover our shared design, the true strength of weakness, the deepest sense of being human?