The feeling of being a burden fuels the assisted dying debate. Nick Spencer reminds us that caring for each other is part of being human. 14/11/2024

Kim Leadbeater’s long–awaited assisted dying bill has been published. The conversation can now start in earnest. 

That conversation will, quite rightly, encompass multiple details… the funding available for palliative care, the medical accuracy of relevant diagnoses, the legal and regulatory frameworks in Canada, Oregon, and elsewhere. Many of these are explored in a new book – talk about good timing! – published by Open University Press on The Reality of Assisted Dying, and edited by Ilora Finlay and Julian Hughes, to whom I spoke for this week’s episode of Reading Our Times.  

Underlying many of these details, however, is the question of how we understand ourselves. This question also has many different perspectives or dimensions to it. What is a human being worth? How far should our autonomy extend? What is the nature of our responsibility to one another? Wherein resides the dignity to which we are all committed? These are the anthropological foundations on which our ethical towers are constructed, upon which we hang our legislative programmes. What we say about ourselves ultimately informs where we go as a society. 

One of the things we say about ourselves, and particularly in this debate, is that we don’t want to be a burden on our loved ones. The line is repeated constantly and plays a role even in jurisdictions like Oregon, which have managed to avoid sliding down the slippery slope with the speed and eagerness of Canada. A 2016 report found that almost 50% of patients in Oregon whose lives were ended under the Oregon Death with Dignity Act cited “being a burden” as one of their concerns. (Finlay and Hughes: 17) 

“Burden” is a dangerous word, one that morally colours just as much as it describes. The word literally means “a heavy load” but is only really used to describe the kind of load that is too heavy or, at least, the kind of load we would be better off without. No–one says, “she’s just such a burden to us” and means something positive or enviable from it. In this way, introducing the word “burden” into our conversation about assisted dying does the thinking for us. If you accept that we shouldn’t be a burden to our loved ones, job done. 

But we shouldn’t accept it, because we are burden to those around us, and we should be. More precisely, the closer your ties to another human being, the greater the chance that that person will be a burden to you at some point in your relationship, just as you will to them. That’s not wrong. It’s part of being human. 

Colleagues are on the periphery. If you do have a colleague who is consistently slope–shouldered, sooner or later they run out of road. But even in the working environment (or, at least, the happy, well–functioning working environment) there are times in which you will carry others’ loads, working late, say, to help them with a deadline or to cover for them as they deal with a personal problem. That burden–bearing is not a permanent feature of the workplace and is usually expected to be reciprocal rather than simply altruistic, but it is there, nonetheless. 

Friends are closer. Superficially, they are the fun part of life. Holiday, pubs, parties, dinner tables: that’s where friends belong. But close friends, as opposed to acquaintances, go beyond that, and there are times when you need them, and they need you. That need can be a burden, demanding time, energy, or money that you might otherwise not choose to offer. But offer it you do, for no more reason than they are your friend. 

And then there is family… well, does it need to be said? The exhausted, bleary eyes of sleep–deprived new parents… the forced smile and raw–handed applause as mum and dad sit through the third nativity play in a week … the emotional bruising they endure during adolescence… the late–night counsel we offer to siblings… the visits to elderly or lonely relatives… it goes on. These are burdens, heavy loads. And we bear them. We bear them because that is how we would like to be treated. We bear them because we feel it is simply the right thing to do. We bear them because we sense this is what makes us more deeply human. We bear them because they are signs of love and without love we are nothing. “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ.” 

Let’s not get too misty eyed here. Sometimes the burden becomes unbearable, so heavy that it will crush us. Martyrdom is no triumph here, if only because if we collapse under the weight of the burden, the person we are trying to help collapses with us. There are times in life when we cannot cope with what we are being called to carry, and we need others to carry with it us. First family, then friends, neighbours, associations, communities, and ultimately the state (though the modern world has not always preserved that order): we need these institutions to help us with those unbearable burdens. 

But that does not change the fundamental picture that humans are here to “bear one another’s burdens”. We are born to carry one another. “If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.” We are natural beasts of burden. If we pretend otherwise, if we think the burden is a distraction from who we are – rather than an example of who we are – we will become less than who we are.  

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