Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel laureate in Economics, died by assisted suicide (according to Wikipedia, “Assisted suicide, also known as physician-assisted suicide (PAS), is the process by which a person, with the help of others, takes drugs to end their life) on 27 March 2024, three weeks after his 90th birthday, in Switzerland (a country where PAS is legal).

In fact he went to Switzerland… to die. He had earlier written an email where he said: “I have believed since I was a teenager that the miseries and indignities of the last years of life are superfluous, and I am acting on that belief. I am still active, enjoying many things in life (except the daily news) and will die a happy man. But my kidneys are on their last legs, the frequency of mental lapses is increasing, and I am ninety years old. It is time to go.”

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Who are we to decide when it’s time to go? Because, after all, our lives are not entirely ours. Had Kahneman’s children hug – ged him closely and made him feel loved and wanted in spite of his ailments, would he still wish to go? Would he still have gone? Because ultimately we live for others, just as much as we live for ourselves ~ through our work and lives ~ in our professions and at home. We are constantly spending every bit of our lives, our time and energies thinking about others’ well-being. Poet Sunil Bhandari writes, “Because the fact is that our breath, our life, is also a collective.

We are made of the efforts, the hope springs, the heart carvings, the soul bindings, the body cravings, the thought mouldings of all who love and care for us. We start being someone and then are slowly changed and created out of what others see us as. What might start as an opinion, an illusion, starts getting recreated. We then are what we make of ourselves, but are also deeply vented and grooved by what our world thinks of us.” And therefore, our lives can never be entirely ours ~ our presence, our existence is so intertwined with those of our near ones, and theirs in ours, and that our lives can never be thought of in isolation.

And therefore it cannot be our decision to end it either. In the same vein, Bhandari, once again, writes, “If our presence makes a difference to the lives of someone else, we are not only our own. If our mere breath gives solace to someone else, we are not our own. If mere presence, without words, without effort, makes someone’s life feel complete, then our life is not merely ours.” And we have also seen instances of how hard ending one’s life could be. One is reminded of Somerset Maugham’s famous short story, The Lotus Eater (a reference to the Lotus eaters of Greek Mythology, who led a life of indolence), where the protagonist gives up his job in London to spend his life in a small cottage on the island of Capri.

He arra nged his finances in a way that he wou ld be able to support himself for a fixed number of years (till he is sixty years old), with the assumption that he wou ld either die naturally by then, or commit suicide. It turned out that he did not die naturally, and after having sold his assets was still unable to make ends meet, and so decided to end his life. He shut him self up in his cottage and lit a charcoal fire to fill the room with carbon monoxide. But somehow with ample leakages, his suicide attempt seemed halfhearted and it failed. He survived but with grave brain damage and lived out the remainder years of his life in a deplorable state.

Maugham therefore wanted to show that it wasn’t easy to end one’s life. The other day there was an article in The Statesman that said Finland is named the happiest country in the world for the eighth year in a row, according to the World Happiness Re – port 2025. Other Nordic countries are once again at the top of the happiness rankings. Finland, Denmark, Iceland and Sweden remain the top four and in the same order. Country rankings were ba – sed on answers people give when asked to rate their own lives.

The study was done in partnership with the analytics firm Gallup and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. “Happiness isn’t just about wealth or growth ~ it’s about trust, connection and knowing people have your back,” said Jon Clifton, the CEO of Gallup. “If we want stronger communities and economies, we must invest in what truly matters: each other.” “Researchers say that beyond health and wealth, some factors that influence happiness sound deceptively simple sharing meals with others, having somebody to count on for social support, and household size. In Mexico and Europe, for example, a household size of four to five people predicts the highest levels of happiness, the study said.

Believing in the kindness of others is also much more closely tied to happiness than previously thought, according to the latest findings. As an example, the report suggests that people who believe that others are willing to return their lost wallet is a strong predictor of the overall happiness of a population. So one must find the light at the end of the tunnel ~ would families survive if their friends and relatives reached out to them, if they reached out to their friends and relatives?

In earlier days with joint families, and societies being much more closely knit, much more supportive of one’s kin and neighbours, it would be hard to imagine circumstances where entire families could choose to end their lives. The growing importance of virtual friendships and relationships no doubt add fuel to the flames of isolation and loneliness. Solitude and depression become a commonplace circumstance instead of being of rare occurrence. Virtual existences, instead of binding and bringing people closer in warm bonds of camaraderie, in physical proximity to each other and in forging genuine relationships, fan the frosty breeze of separation and solitariness.

But Camus urges us to think positively. In the preface to The Myth of Sisyphus, he writes, “The fundamental subject of The Myth of Sisyphus is this: it is legitimate and necessary to wonder whether life has a meaning; therefore it is legitimate to meet the problem of sui cide face to face. The answer, underlying and appearing through the paradoxes which cover it, is this: even if one does not believe in God, suicide is not legitimate. Written fifteen years ago, in 1940, amid the French and European disaster, this book declares that even within the limits of nihilism it is possible to find the means to proceed beyond nihilism.

In all the books I have written since, I have attempted to pursue this direction. Although The Myth of Sisyphus poses mortal problems, it sums itself up for me as a lucid invitation to live and to create, in the very midst of the desert.” And hence, concluding in words of Camus again: “I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well.

This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. “Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

So life may be a desert, but it is up to us to create forests in it, we may be given a huge stone to roll up a mountain knowing very well that it will roll back, but it is we who will have to accomplish the feat, it’s we who will have to arrange to have meals together, and look out for each other, it’s we who will have to return lost wallets and show kindness to others, it’s we who will have to feel the breeze and the sun on our skin and start living, start wanting to live like the toad and all living beings, it’s we who will have to stop being lotus eaters and start seeking like meaningfully, not just spending it like a burden. It is up to us to be happy Sisyphuses.

(The writer is Associate Professor, Economic Research Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata)