"ROWING WITHOUT OARS"

Bill Stephen

I have been reading a book published last year and recently serialised on the BBC 4 programme, "Book of the Week". It was written by Ulla-Carin Lindquist, a fifty-year old Swedish woman who was a journalist and was a presenter on the main evening news programme on Swedish Television. It is entitled "Rowing without Oars", translated by Margaret Myers and published by BCA. Apparently it has become an international best seller. It is quite a short book, very simply written, with short sentences and short chapters most of which are only two or three pages long. You can read it in a few of hours. It is superbly written, clear, concise, honest, profound, and challenging, in that it invites the reader to consider his/ her reaction to the appalling situation the author finds herself in. It is autobiographical; almost a diary, in fact, of the last eighteen months or so of her life. She died in March 2004, three months after writing her last chapter which finishes with the sentence, "Every second is a life".
Ulla-Carin Lindquist was married to her second husband, Ollie, a surgeon, and they had two sons, Pontus aged 11 and Gustaf, 9. She also had two daughters of an earlier marriage, now both in their early twenties and studying away from home. Ulla was a high-flyer, at the top of her profession, recognised wherever she went in Sweden as a TV presenter, much sought after, feted, and celebrated. She was a keen athlete, a skier, a swimmer, and she could handle a yacht single-handed. At the same time she ran her household looked after her husband and two sons and kept a close motherly eye on her two student daughters.
Her week days were spent juggling job, children, household duties and family needs, regulated by a strict time-table and dominated by the need to be well-prepared, calm and collected to face the TV cameras for an hour, every day, Monday to Friday. At the weekend they usually went to their country cottage to sail or ski or walk or go horse-riding in the hills. In spite of her nerve-wracking work in the highly charged atmosphere of a TV studio and the demands of her family and domestic responsibilities she was coping, well on top of everything, with strength and energy to spare for socialising and taking strenuous holidays. 
One weekend she and her husband are out sailing and as she tries to row their dinghy to shore, she has barely the strength to swing the oars and has to give up. A few days later she discovers she has difficulty hanging out clothes and holding a pen, and her right hand feels numb.
At first they think she has a slipped disc as a. result of a tumble she had taken when riding but after many exhaustive tests, her doctors conclude she is suffering from a rare disease, known as A.L.S., amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a process in which the motor neurone cells in the brain and spinal cord die off, causing the muscles elsewhere in the body to waste away as they no longer receive any signals from the brain and, therefore, do not receive any nourishment and eventually stop work. The thinking part of the brain remains unaffected and is clear and alert to the end.
The patient dies when the muscles that control the breathing are eventually unable to operate. As it is a very rare disease, very little research has been done into its cause and cure; consequently it is currently incurable; there is no treatment apart from palliative care and it is fatal in less than three years. Ulla-Carin Lindquist was, therefore, facing a delayed death sentence.
The physical difficulties created by creeping paralysis can be addressed by adapting her house for disabled living and over the months a stair- lift and a special toilet and shower are installed and so on. She is also assigned several carers and counsellors, all provided by the Swedish National Health Service. Soon she is forced by her deteriorating condition to give up work and in order to keep her mind employed decides to write an account of what is happening to her, of her thoughts and feelings, as stage by stage, the disease takes control of her whole body. Sometime in June 2003 she starts to write her diary and from then until Christmas of that year she records the changing seasons, notes important national events to keep herself aware of the world beyond and charts her rapid decline. She observes the strictest discipline and control over her writing: everything is lucid, coherent and strictly relevant. Most of her book is concerned with her emotional state and the personal problems, she and her family face.
After many chaotic weeks of uncertainty and worry during the investigation of her symptoms, she accepts the news of her terrible fate fairly calmly. She is not angry or resentful. Her illness was not caused by anything she had done or had failed to do. It had befallen her by sheer blind chance. Plain bad luck. It may have been triggered by a virus or a faulty gene. Nothing she could have done would have prevented it.
She is, however, distraught by the thought of how it will effect her children and how she will tell them, especially the young boys. Understandably her husband is deeply upset but she would much rather he were not because she needs his strength and support, his good humour and cheerfulness above all. Her daughters are devastated and realise that their world has changed for ever, that the most important person in their lives will not be part of their future and that the support they had assumed would be there for years to come, has been removed. Her sons, of course, know about her illness but she has to make them understand that she will never get better and that very soon she will die. She does it as gently as possible. They don't say much, but are profoundly shocked by the news.
She is anxious that her illness does not damage them psychologically, nor interferes with their schoolwork or their relationship with their friends and classmates. She thinks they may feel embarrassed to tell people that their mother is dying. Her sensitivity and sense of responsibility extends to the other children in school. She is concerned that the news may upset them and undermine their belief in the health and survival of their own parents. Drawing upon her remaining energy and strength she arranges a meeting with her children's teachers and an educational psychologist to discuss the best way of coping with an these concerns.
Hers is a very close-knit family which includes her own mother and her in-laws. She realises she cannot relieve them of the sense of loss that will assail them when they are bereaved. She longs to comfort them, but no words that she or anyone else may utter will help at first. She feels profound sympathy for their plight and cannot ignore a sense of guilt that she has somehow let them down, a feeling that she is to abandon them when they rely on her so much.
She thinks a lot about grief and discusses it with her closest friends. She thinks that members of a family feel grief differently at different times. One person has to rein in their grief in order to comfort another whose suffering is severe. While much of grieving has to be done by each person individually, as the deepest sorrow has to be borne alone, she also feels that there is some reassurance in shared grief and when she sees her family grieving for her she accepts it as an expression of their love.
She tries to maintain their normal life-style as far as is possible, taking an interest in everything that her children, husband, friends and colleagues are doing. She knows how important it is that she should remain part of her children's lives and that she tells them what she needs from them and how she hopes that they will keep her expectations of them in mind when she is now longer with them. She tries not to show any unhappiness or feel self- pity, as much to reassure her sons as to sustain her own morale. She refuses to become a prisoner of her condition, locked within her own misery by pain and fear. Her increasing disability creates anxiety and tension enough for the rest of the family; if she were to appear to be suffering emotionally as well as physically, the strain might very well be more than they could cope with.
She makes up her mind to live in the present. The past is another country which may be visited in memory but never with regret and she recalls many happy occasions. The future, however, is closed to her. And so she lives from day to day, making the most of every hour. When at work, she was always rushing around preparing for the next day and the one after that. She was never able to focus on the immediate but always on the potential. Never on what is, but always on what might be. Now she observes the passage of the sun across the sky; the buds bursting into leaf and the slow approach of Autumn, the intricate patterns of bare twigs and the unique designs frost paints on the window. Now she has time for everyone, to listen to their stories, to look into their eyes, to feel their touch and to revel in their presence. Her family are closer to her than ever and she also has time for herself: relieved of professional and domestic responsibilities, she can find herself again. Each of her days passes at a measured pace. each exists as a train of separate minutes, each one of which is treasured and savoured as a thing unique in itself. Not a moment is taken for granted. She is alert to everything around her and aware of every little difference that separates one moment from the next.
She is surrounded by family, friends and devoted carers who see to her every need, but as her condition worsens to the stage where she cannot speak or eat or move her limbs, she sometimes feels lonely and finds herself grieving alone. She wonders if her illness will be the sum and substance of her existence, that all her sons will remember of her will be her disability and death. Perhaps all the good times they have had together and all the worthwhile things she has achieved will be completely overshadowed by the sorrow felt at her passing. She tries to fight against these thoughts by telling herself that although she is compelled to live in darkness, she herself is not that darkness. She feels that her life has amounted to very much more than misery and that she is still very far from being utterly pointless.
Her Minister, a woman of her own age, visits her regularly and they talk about religion and death and her funeral. She is not sure about God but she feels that there is something beyond herself and she knows that when she dies life will continue and there will be good things and joy and creativity still on earth. She takes comfort from the thought that although dying is a solitary process, she will die surrounded by those who love her and that she will continue as a loving presence in their memory for as long as they themselves shall live.
I feel her account is to be trusted, not only because of its candour and intimacy, but because of its rationality. It is human throughout. It makes no claim upon the miraculous, nor does it seek or hope for supernatural intervention. She sees her problem as being a human one and its solution, in so far as there is one, must also be human. Preparedness, candour, composure, mutual trust and respect and the acceptance of the inevitable pain of bereavement constitute her practical response.
In accepting this state of affairs without complaint, she demonstrates the capacity of the human spirit to confront catastrophe and its inevitable result with courage and dignity.
In the wider sense of the term, I would class "Rowing without oars" a religious book. Not only does it encourage us to confront our own mortality, it also deals unsentimentally with the human condition, repeatedly asserts the value of human life and sets human consciousness in an infinite environment, that not only takes cognisance of the past, present and future, but also does so in a climate of hopefulness and trust.
She also reminds us of the contradiction that lies at the heart of the human condition. In the face of death we are powerless, physically, and none is exempt, but as long as we have faith in the continuing power of human love and the creative power of nature, then spiritually we are invincible.
When we are told by a woman who has suffered as much and lost as much as Ulla-Carin Lindquist that life is beautiful and well worth having, I feel obliged to believe her.

Bill Stephen

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AROUND THE WORLD............ HOPEFULLY?

By David Kelso

Unitarians, generally, are quite well educated, no? In the US, the Unitarian-Universalist church has a bit of a reputation as the highbrow church; not, I think, because they're all Nobel laureates, but because Unitarianism is a philosophy and approach to living that appeals more to people who think about things. Only a minority of us are birthright Unitarians (to borrow a Quaker expression); most of us have chosen Unitarianism, often after a fair bit of searching, reading and thinking.
That being the case - I don't hear any objections 1 - I'm sure most of my readers will have heard of Esperanto, the international language. When it comes up in conversation, many people say "Oh yes, is that still around?" or "Yes, it was a good idea. Pity it never caught on." So, educated people (Unitarians, for example !) usually know what Esperanto is, but think of it as something from the Past: from between the Wars, or perhaps from the 1960s - depending on your age. Well, Today's News is that Esperanto is still around; and, yes, it is a pity it hasn't caught on - yet! You see, I'm an esperantist - There, I've said it! - and I don't understand why more people don't take it up.
I learned Esperanto as a teenager, because "it seemed like a good idea". Teenagers do that kind of thing; maybe we all should? Over the years, I must have used Esperanto in 20 or more countries, at conferences, on Esperanto holidays, in people's homes, or just over a meal or a glass of beer when I am in a strange city. How? Well, you don't exactly bump into Esperanto-speakers in the street: there are perhaps a million, maybe even 2 million, in the world. It's difficult to be precise because Who's counting? I mean, how many people in the world can play the mouth organ? - Well, how many? No, you don't bump into esperantists in the street but you can easily make contact with them because there are plenty of directories, address lists and websites that tell you whether there are any esperantists in Malaga, or Delhi or Addis Ababa. (There are, by the way: there are esperantists in over 120 countries in every continent). So, nowadays I usually send an e-mail saying when I'm coming and asking if there's any chance of meeting. Sometimes I'm invited to visit the family (yes, there are Esperanto families) or come along to the local Esperanto Club; sometimes I get a conducted tour of the city (as in Palermo, last winter); often it's just a matter of meeting for an hour or so for a chat; and, of course, sometimes nothing is possible because dates don't match or they're too busy. (Even esperantists have to earn a living).
But if we meet, when we meet, we don't speak my language, or their language, we speak our language, a beautiful, simple, very expressive language that belongs to everyone, not just people born in a particular country. If you think about it, that's something quite remarkable: to talk with a Mongolian (as I did a couple of months ago, in London), not in English (which she spoke only haltingly) or in Mongolian (which I speak - ahem - even more haltingly!) but in a common language which we both spoke equally comfortably. So, if we talk about Iraq, or Global Warming, or GS, or the Olympics, or what's on TV tonight, neither of us has a built-in advantage, we're conversing, communicating, relating, on equal terms.
What language do Unitarians use when we meet internationally? Or Christians in general? Or even World Federalists? Yep, that's right - English. A bit tough on the French, Russians, Chinese, Hungarians..... in fact, a bit tough on 90% of the world's population!
So you're convinced? Great. But why isn't everyone? Well, you do have to learn Esperanto before you can speak it. Sure, it's a lot easier than any national language, but even an easy language takes a bit of time to learn. If you do an evening class in Esperanto (or the equivalent correspondence or internet course) - and do your homework! - after a year (i.e. 8 months) you can write a simple letter in Esperanto and conduct a simple conversation. After two years, you should be able to cope with most everyday situations, fairly comfortably. After three years - if you do your homework! - you should be more or less fluent. Honest, no kidding. But that's still a bit of work: you can join Amnesty by filling in a form and writing a cheque. 
I suppose another reason is the same reason why there are so few Unitarians: you can't eat it, drink it, wear it or spend it, so what's the point? Idealism is out of fashion, I'm afraid. Or is it? Esperanto is going great guns in Brazil, China, India and Iran; I think idealism is a bit more fashionable in these countries, who see real, promising prospects for a better world opening up, and hope for the best. Which is what Esperanto means - someone who hopes. When Ludovik Zamenhof published his project in 1887, he very modestly called it The International Language and used the pseudonym Doktoro Esperanto, "Dr. Hopeful". So, the language of dro Esperanto became just Esperanto. A good name, though, because that is what characterises the Esperanto community - Hope: hope for a better, fairer, more just world where we all relate to one another, not as Rich and Poor, Powerful and Weak, North and South, but on equal terms, as equal, fellow human beings. Is that such a daft idea?
I haven't burdened you with a lot of detailed information. If anyone would like to know more about this extraordinary language and its community, drop me a note at one of the addresses below, go to www.esperanto.org. or do a Google search: when I tried a few minutes ago, it came up with 12.600,000 results. That should keep you going until the next issue of The Link!

davidekelso@yahoo.co.uk

David Kelso, 5 Craigenhill Road, Kilncadzow, Carluke, ML8 4QT

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ENVY

"Schadenfreude" is a a wonderful German word and may very well sell more copies of newspapers, particularly tabloids, than any other cause. It means taking delight in another person's misfortunes, especially of someone we might have envied. The process is well understood and exploited by newspaper editors. They create celebrities of footbaIlers and their female adjuncts, TV performers, pop singers, film actors of both genders, supermodels, socialites and so on by informing their readers of every trifling feature of their day- to-day existence. They are interviewed about their clothes, their houses, their favourite recipes, their exotic holiday villas, their taste in pop music etc. and their views on any number of topics of which they have minimal knowledge and less interest, are widely publicised. They are presented as living exciting, glamorous, extravagant exclusively company lives, in the of other 'celebs'. Above all, we are constantly reminded of their great wealth, their wonderful possessions, their superbly furnished mansions, their designer clothes and custom-built motor cars, all to stoke up the fires of our envy, until each of us is a blazing furnace of covetousness! Then, the bubble is burst! At the peak of their popularity or celebrity, they do something monstrous! They insult the Queen, run off with another person's wife and/or husband/partner. Confess they are an alcoholic or use drugs regularly. Owe vast sums of money to the Inland Revenue. Kick their neighbour's arthritic dog down a flight of stairs. Punch a beggar in the face outside a very expensive restaurant. Attempt to drive while heavily intoxicated. Anything at all that will demonstrate to the great British public that after all, our hero has feet of clay and never deserved the adulation poured upon him or her. Then we are supposed to bathe in that wonderful feeling of "schadenfreude" , delighted that this icon in whom we have been so deceived has justifiably been trodden into the mud by the guardians of public decency, who raised him/her up in the first place. How are the mighty fallen, and how we are supposed to enjoy it! Envy is a very nasty characteristic and it seems to permeate human nature through and through, and has been the curse of every society in every historical period. Not even God is above envy. "Thou shall have no other gods before me," he thunders in Exodus Chapter 20. "For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God!" and, somewhat inconsistently he warns the Israelites against the very sin he admits to himself. "Thou shall not covet thy neighbour's house, or thy neighbour's wife, manservant, maidservant, ox, ass or anything that is thy neighbour's." Ancient thinkers in addition to the writers of Exodus, were clearly deeply worried about the effects of envy. In fact they identified envy as the root of all evil. It provoked the great civil war in Heaven which ended with the expulsion of the rebel angels from the sight of God and eventually of Adam and Eve from paradise. Lucifer, the brightest of all the angels, was deeply envious of God's power and tried to wrest it from him. God proved too powerful for him and he was driven into Hell, where to this very day, he rules as Satan, the Prince of Darkness and the Lord of Envy.
The very first murder narrated in the Bible, that of Cain upon Abel was motivated by envy, because God preferred Abel's sacrifice to Cain's. Joseph's Brothers tried to murder him because their father, Jacob, favoured him above all his other sons and they were envious of his coat of many colours. King David had his chief general, Uriah the Hittite, assassinated in battle, so that he could take possession of his wife, Bathsheba, whom he coveted.
Ancient Greek myth also reflects the malign power of envy. The Goddesses, Aphrodite (Venus), Hera (Juno) and Athena wish Paris, the son of King Priam of. Troy to decide which one of them is the most beautiful. He chooses Aphrodite. The other two are so envious that out of sheer pique they bring about the Trojan war and the defeat of Troy.
The Classical world was so wary of provoking the envy of the Gods that they invented the sin of "hubris", that is of over-weening pride. A mere mortal might feel himself/herself to be doing rather well and might boast of the fact. A God, envious of that person's success, or talent or good looks or courage, might then do something particularly nasty to humiliate and destroy him or her. The Greeks had a saying that you can never say a person has had a fortunate life until he or she is dead. To do so earlier might provoke the wrath of a jealous God. This, of course is a sentiment shared by many peoples and has come down to our own time in the shape of the superstition, "Touch wood". This is a kind of magic spell to deflect the ire of fate or the ancient gods, when we admit openly that things are going well for us but do not wish to be thought boastful.
The 6th  century B.C. writer of fables, Aesop, also exploits the same theme in the tale of the Fox and the Grapes. When Fox cannot reach the grapes high up on the vine, he comforts himself with the thought that "They are sour anyway", and the phrase "sour grapes" has become a popular expression for indicating envy.
Envy of his virtuous reputation and great intellect was the death of Socrates and in order to preserve their greatest statesmen, the Athenians would banish them for up to ten years after a particular triumph so that they would not suffer the wrath of envious people. The Greeks detested envy as a destructive and murderous emotion, but realistic people that they were, thought that nothing very much could be done to curb it.
Jesus was also aware of envy and recognised that rivalry over material possessions and power was at the root of it. He tried to persuade people that pursuit of earthly rewards is a waste of energy. What really matters is to stockpile riches in heaven by being kind, compassionate, loving and generous to other people, rather than trying to undermine and humiliate them. St. Paul reminded his followers that love will have no truck with envy. "Charity envieth not".
Envy continued to worry the early Christians and St. Gregory the Great, in 6th the century numbered it among the Seven Deadly Sins along with, Pride, Avarice, Lust, Anger, Gluttony and Sloth, all reconfirmed by St.Thomas Aquinas in the 13th. These sins were defined as "deadly" because they provoke a whole train of further wrong doing and anti-social attitudes. David Hume, the 18th century Scottish philosopher, who was reputed to be an atheist seems to agree. In his "Treatise of Human Nature" he describes the growth and consequences of envy thus," Grief, disappointment give rise to anger, anger envy, envy to malice and malice to grief again, till the whole circle is complete."
At the root of envy is a feeling of injustice. A person feels a sense of unfairness if someone else is wealthier, or has more possessions or appears to be more fortunate, especially if he or she seems to be no more talented or industrious or astute or even better looking. "Why should the folk next door have a BMW car and we only have a Ford Fiesta? They're no better than we are and we know for a fact they never pay parking fines. They get away with anything and then seem to prosper. It really is very unfair." And then we begrudge them their good luck and so on. People often would rather be slightly better off than worse off than the folk next door. "Keeping up with the Jonses" is just another term for competition or rivalry which flourishes throughout the whole range of human endeavour, at work, at leisure, in business, in the world of arts and entertainment.
Competition is usually seen as a positive process as it improves performance and efficiency but it is impossible to disentangle it from its darker side which is envy. In many cases it is envy that drives people on to be first or best or most powerful or win acclaim, rather than the desire to excel or serve humanity. Many people cannot bear the thought that they may be seen as being second best, to play second fiddle, to take a backseat, to be just one of the crowd, to be in some-one else's shadow, or to be a has-been or worse still, a-never-was, while all the time they know in themselves they deserve to be top dog, the leader of the pack, the decision maker, the mega-star earning hyper bucks, indeed, the envy of all! Such people, be they in politics, or commerce or show business, troop across our newspapers in a never-ending stream, their intrigues, their manoeuvrings, their plottings, their successes and their downfalls, the mainstay of popular journalism.
Envy is such a dominant influence upon us that it is the driving force behind certain philosophical and political movements, including Marxism, Communism Socialism. Marx claimed that the people who actually produce the wealth, that is the working class, ought to control and possess it. However, all the wealth and power is in the hands of the great landowners, the factory owners the financiers and professional classes, who certainly do not deserve what they have, since they don't make anything. The proletariat, according to Marx, is justifiably envious of the wealth and possessions of the rich and should therefore rise up and take it all from them by force. Envy, then, is used as a political weapon to achieve regime and social change.
Socialism, ideally was intended to eliminate envy altogether. Once everyone is the equal of every other person, there would be nothing left to envy . However, this ideal was also motivated by envy because those who have are compelled to give to those who have not, who wish to possess themselves of the goods of the better off. In practice, of course, equality is impossible to achieve, because the leaders claim that they are more equal than the others, deserve a bigger slice of the cake and so perpetuate the climate of envy that they were pledged to end. George Orwell's devastating expose of the totalitarian socialist state in his short novel "Animal Farm" is a closely observed study of the causes and effects of envy in a political context. In historical terms, the same process has been identified in Stalinist Russia, Mao Tse Tung's China and currently in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe.
Envy also plays dominant role in literature. It is a vital component of the novels of Charles Dickens. Uriah Heep, for instance, in "David Copperfield" is one of the nastiest creations one would ever wish to meet, whose obsessive envy of his employer, Mr Wickfield, extends to his business, his home and possessions, his good name and even his daughter, Agnes. His remorseless efforts to possess himself of everything that is his employer's brings Mr Wickfield to utter ruin and eventually leads to Heep's own well merited destruction.
However, the most intense and perceptive study of envy appears in Shakespeare's play "Othello". Othello is a moor, a black man who has been made commander in chief of the armed forces of Venice. He is middle aged but has won the heart of Desdemona, the young daughter of a leading nobleman. Many aristocrats and military men are envious of Othello and feel that he, a mere foreigner, has not deserved so much good fortune. Iago, Othello's personal assistant in particular, is consumed by envy and is determine d to destroy his superior for whom he claims the greatest admiration and to whom he swears undying loyalty. There is a dog-in-the manger aspect to all envy, which says that, " if I can't have what you have, then I shall do all I can to prevent you having it also." In extreme cases of envy this attitude engenders malice and hatred and so it is with Iago. He will never be Captain General of Venice nor married to Desdemona but he will ensure that such good fortune will not be long enjoyed by Othello either. Shakespeare's forensic analysis of Iago' s bitter, frustrated mind reveals that self...pity, self-delusion and a readiness to feel slighted and insulted by whatever is said to him not only sustains his jealousy of Othello, but also proceeds from his own self loathing. He hates, Othello; but he also hates himself because he is not Othello. The murderers of Julius Caesar, betray similar feelings. Iago is completely successful. He persuades Othello that Desdemona is having an affair with his best friend. The friend is humiliated, Desdemona is smothered by Othello who then commits suicide. Iago's plot is eventually discovered and he is punished. Again, as is usual, in these cases, neither the perpetrator nor the victim survives unscathed.
Envy is a disorder we must guard against. It burrows deep into the spirit, spreading its poison, making us feel dissatisfied with our lot, unhappy about ourselves and distorting our view of reality. It warps our judgment and blocks our clarity. It undermines creativity and encourages cynicism. It greets the world with a sneer and regards achievement in others with scorn. It promotes malice and hatred and achieves nothing but discord and misery.
We Unitarians accept full moral responsibility for our motives and our actions. Recognising that we are all subject to it, how do we guard against it? We must be honest with ourselves about our motives for what we do and say and feel. When we think about what is happening to us and to others our judgment must be balanced and rational. We should never jump to conclusions about our own worth and that of other people.
The most powerful antidotes to envy are contentment and love. A true understanding of ourselves and of what we have been given helps us to find contentment with our own lives. And if take joy in the success of others, if we take pleasure in their good fortune, what harm has come to us? If we are unhappy the cure may be found in ourselves and certainly not in envying the lives of others. We have lost nothing but have gained spiritually by the selfless expression of our love for our fellow creatures. We should try to appreciate the skills and talents of other people as part of the immense richness of the universe, as we might enjoy a beautiful landscape, while at the same time recognising that we too have our own unique personality that no-one else can possess. In our own originality, we too may be enviable. 

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A MATTER OF DIGNITY

A party of young men and women are spending a hot summer's afternoon on a beach in Northern Spain. The men are showing off to the girls by diving from a low cliff into a deep pool. The caper is very risky. They have to time their dive to coincide with an incoming wave so that there will be sufficient depth of water in the pool. One young man steps up to take his turn. He times a wave as it surges into the pool, raises the water level and then recedes, reducing the level by several feet. He gathers himself to leap with the next wave. Momentarily, he glances sideways to see if his fiancée is watching him. Without thinking, he then launches himself off the cliff just as the wave retreats. He plunges through the water and collides head on with the sandy sea bed. His head is driven back between his shoulders. The sudden shock ripples through his whole body. He loses consciousness and floats face down at the bottom of the pool. Immediately he is pulled out and laid on the shingle. As his friends start to resuscitate him he comes round. There are shouts of joy. They have saved his life. A few minutes later, however, he is wishing they hadn't bothered.
This event and more particularly its consequences, brings the victim, thirty years later, to worldwide notice as the hero of the film "The Sea Inside", directed by Alejandro Amenabar, starring Javier Bardem, and winner of the 2005 Golden Globe award for best foreign film. The hero, Ramon Sampedro, is in his early twenties when he makes that fateful dive. Born near La Corruna, on the Galician coast of Spain, he has an inbred love of the sea. He is a ship's engineer and has sailed around the world several times. He is adventurous, full of energy, always on the move and impatient to explore whatever is over the horizon. Life is opening up for him in so many exciting ways. He enjoys using his body, walking, climbing, swimming, delighting in his senses, in the colours and scents of nature, the touch of the wind on his face, the warmth of the sun on his skin. The world fascinates him, with its great cities, its monuments, its peoples, He collects postcards of the countries he visits and has himself photographed beside iconic landmarks such as the Eiffel tower. the pyramids, the Temples of the far East and so on.
As he stood on the cliff top preparing to dive, he was blissfully happy. He had become engaged to be married during his leave and was looking forward to one more world trip before deciding how to spend the rest of his life. But fate had decided for him.
He was rushed to hospital. He had broken his neck and had permanently damaged the nerves to the rest of his body. He was paralysed from the neck down, incapable of any movement or any feeling. He could live a normal life-span, but would be dependent upon other people for his every bodily need.
When the film opens, he has been bedridden for almost thirty years. He lives in a small upstairs bedroom in his older brother Jose's grim, little farm-house, where he is looked after by his sister-in-law, Manuela, and young Javi, his teenage nephew. Most of the action takes place in this cramped setting, with its huge bed, computer-screen, record-player, TV set and telephone. There is a view of low hills from the window but no sight of the sea. Although he loves the sea, Ramon explains that its absence does not bother him, because he has the sea inside him and can visit it in his imagination any times he wishes.
For three decades almost, Ramon has occupied himself with one project, how to engineer his own death. Being a resourceful and ingenious person, he has invented several simple tools that he can operate with his mouth, such as a spatula with which he can operate a computer keyboard, but he cannot commit suicide without the help of at least one other person and this is where he collides with the law. Any person assisting him in this way would very likely be charged with murder by the Spanish authorities, and Ramon, clearly, would not wish that.
That Ramon woos death so passionately, seems inconsistent with his character. He is witty, vivacious, alert, a lively conversationalist and is interested in everyone and everything around him. Javi, of whom he is very fond, particularly engages his interest and concern. Ramon is highly intelligent, writes poetry, reads, listens to the radio, occasionally watches TV and is very fond of classical music and opera. A steady stream of visitors comes to his bedside to swap yarns, listen to his views about the state of the world, ask his advice and enjoy his company.
Ramon is the centre of his family; supporting him, caring for him is the prime purpose of their lives. His sister-in-law is up and down the stair a dozen or more times a day, bringing food and drink, feeding him, washing and shaving him and seeing to all his needs. His nephew fetches and carries for him and does his homework and watches TV in his room. His brother who is a surly, awkward, person, nevertheless gave up a successful career at sea to become a market gardener, in order to look after him. His widowed father likes to spend his time sitting by him. They love him and his brother is the only one to mention the sacrifice he has made for him. They are firmly bound to him by family loyalty and love. They want him to be there. They need him. They cannot understand, therefore, his wish to die. He seems to have so much to live for.
A worthwhile life for Ramon however, includes the ability to roam about at will. From time to time, he goes off on an imaginary flight across the sand dunes to the beach where he follows the tide line around the whole world but this is no substitute for experiencing the world at first hand. He also longs to touch and be touched. No relationship has any meaning, any proper intimacy, he says, if the sense of touch is absent. He refused to accept his fiancée's offer of marriage years ago because he could never caress her and he could never feel her touch. This life imprisoned within an immobile, unfeeling body was sheer torture to him. All dignity was denied him. He had no independence, no freedom of action. There is no hint of self-pity or bitterness in his character but the misery of his situation, his obligation to be eternally grateful to others is clearly stated in his remark, " When you depend on others for everything, you learn to cry with a smile." He is also constantly embarrassed because every private, bodily function is performed with the help of someone else. He says that "Dependence robs him of intimacy." He is aware that he is loved by his family, that he is important to them and that his decision to kill himself must seem very selfish and ungrateful to them after all they have done for him, but a life without physical freedom, is no life at all and should be ended. He is a talking head, he says, attached to a lifeless body, an absurdity.
Assisted suicide is illegal in Spain so Ramon enlisted the aid of an organisation called Death with Dignity to plead his case with the Spanish Courts to allow him to die with dignity. They brief a lawyer, Julia, who is also suffering from a serious degenerative disease to handle his case. She immediately succumbs to his charm. He understands her plight, is deeply sympathetic and she feels uplifted by his good-humour and sunny temperament. She reads his poetry and is impressed by the sincerity and clarity with which he describes his life as a free spirit shackled to an immobile body. She decides to find a publisher for his work and together they start to select and edit his poetry. She becomes very fond of him and aware of the hopelessness of her own condition, enters into a suicide pact with him, to be fulfilled when the book is published.
Another woman, Rosa, has also entered his life, a young factory worker who saw him on television. A single parent, she is poor, at her wits' end, coping with full-time work, a house-hold and two demanding children. Depressed and disillusioned with life herself, she admires his serenity, relaxed acceptance of his terrible affliction, and on impulse visits him. She needs someone to talk to, and Ramon seems to be approachable and wise, an older relative who might bring her comfort. After an initial misunderstanding, they take to each other, and Rosa falls under his spell. In his presence, her own troubles seem trivial and his interest in her reassures her of her own worth. They discuss religion and he explains that he has no belief in an after-life: "After we die, there is nothing. Just like before we were born." She is impressed by his sincerity and simple acceptance of death. She becomes deeply attached to him and eventually considers him indispensable to her own happiness. Ramon's tussles with the authorities to allow him to die with dignity is a personal matter. He is not waging a campaign for the euthanasia lobby nor is he championing the cause of other quadriplegics who may wish to die. However, as soon as his case is heard in court, he becomes a controversial figure. Various interested groups for and against euthanasia, enter the fray. The Roman Catholic Church, for instance, argues that life is a gift from God and only God can take it away and since each individual derives his/her dignity from God, that dignity can never be lost, no matter what the individual's circumstances may be. Others argue that if euthanasia were ever to be legalised, it would eventually be used for sinister purposes by unscrupulous people wishing to rid themselves of burdensome relatives - the slippery slope argument. Ramon's response in court is, "I think living is a right, not an obligation. Nevertheless I have been obliged to tolerate this pitiful existence. Life that costs freedom, isn't life."
The courts dismissed his case on the grounds that the law quite clearly prohibited any form of assisted suicide. Frustrated and disappointed, Ramon addressed an open letter to the legal, religious and political authorities. He said, "It is not that my conscience finds itself trapped in the deformity of my atrophied and numb body, but in the deformity, atrophy and insensitivity of your consciences."
The court's summary dismissal of his plea, reinforces his decision to die by his own hand. His family being resolutely against his intention, he leaves home and finds shelter with Rosa in a little house by the sea, the sea which gave him life and then took it away again. Rosa loves him deeply. She tries hard to change his mind but moved by his suffering agrees to let him die in her home.
His book is published, but Julia has changed her mind about dying. Ramon is now on his own. Through several friends he obtains poison, others mix it in a glass of water for him, another places it with a straw beside his head and he drinks the mixture in front of a video camera in an empty room. No one else is involved. He chooses to take the drink; he administers the poison himself.
The fact that this film appears now is symptomatic of the growing support for euthanasia in the Western world. Physician assisted suicide is legal in Finland, Sweden, The Netherlands, Switzerland and in the American State of Oregon. Ramon's battle with the Spanish courts echoes that of Diane Pretty, the British woman who unsuccessfully petitioned the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg to allow her husband to help her commit suicide and so to die with dignity at a time of her own choosing. Diane stricken by motor neurone disease and paralysed from the neck down eventually died in a hospice in May 2002. In December 2004, however. the husband of another 66 year old British woman suffering from a degenerative, terminal disease was permitted by the English High Court to accompany her to Zurich where she committed suicide with the assistance of a physician. In the past three years, 37 British people have travelled to Switzerland to kill themselves in the clinic of the Dignitas organisation, which is on the point of opening premises in the U.K. A major debate is currently taking place in the House of Lords on the possibility of legalising assisted suicide.
In spite of all this activity, as yet, there seems to be no consensus among all the liberal democracies on this matter of euthanasia. On the one hand there is an acknowledgement that the individual has a right over whatever concerns himself only. As John Stuart Mill, the great 19th century champion of liberal democracy, wrote in his essay, 'On Liberty', "This core sphere where the individual has sovereignty, comprises first, consciousness, second, liberty of tastes and pursuits, of framing the plan of one's life to suit one's own character..... The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing one's own good in one's own way." A life, in other words, cannot be a good life unless it is freely chosen and one may choose to end a life that has been deprived of all dignity or that is made intolerable by persistent, severe pain. On the other hand is the religious argument, favoured by the majority of traditional Churches, that human life is sacred and, therefore, inviolable; and the legal bugbear of the "slippery slope" effect, that if any form of euthanasia is legalised it will be impossible to prevent its being extended into areas where it was never intended to be applied. Opinion is divided among quadriplegics also. The late Christopher Reed, for instance, the "Superman" actor paralysed from tbe neck down as a result of a riding accident was as determined to survive and find a cure for his condition as Ramon was to die.
Although "The Sea Inside" is clearly in favour of euthanasia it is not a strident piece of propaganda. Not only does it acknowledge contradictory arguments, it is also sensitively and discreetly performed. This is not a tear-jerker - there is much humour, laughter and fun in it nor is it melodrama, striving for cheap emotional effects, but a restrained, compassionate portrait of a remarkable man struggling to cope with a nightmarish existence. It is an uplifting film in that it is life confirming. Ramon, charismatic and benign, is as much alive as anyone you might ever meet and paradoxically positive and upbeat in his determination to die. His life is tragic but never sad or defeated. Eventually, an ethical consensus about euthanasia will emerge, and the terminally and incurably ill will be permitted a free choice between life and death according to how they rate the quality of their life. No doubt the producers of "The Sea Inside" hope that their work will contribute to this desirable end.

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