By the time you read these lines, I will have died. I have decided to end my life, to exercise my inalienable right to make decisions about my own life freely and responsibly.
You will likely ask yourself why? What's the reason for such an unprecedented decision? In fact, I'm not terminally ill, I don't have a grave and incurable disease. I'm not depressed either. Simply, my moment to die has arrived. It's the right moment to die. Not too soon. Not too late. It's the right moment to embrace my death freely, that death -- like Nietzsche says -- that comes to me because I want it to.
Throughout my life I have tried to reconcile what I think, what I want, what I do and what I should do. That's why I've also tried to lead a dignified, free, valuable and beautiful life. And that's how I've also wanted my last breath of life: dignified, free, beautiful and valuable. That's how I've wanted to live and that's how I've wanted to die.
Yes, human beings should live well and for that same reason also die well.
I've wanted to live fully each moment of my existence. I've loved and continue loving life with passion and all my strength. I've approached its possible end in a friendly and calm way, in no hurry, with a lot of serenity and reflection. In fact, death is just the last beat of life, and if the life has been valuable and good it should also lead to a dignified, gentle and good death.
Every human being should live well, let others live, make it possible for others to live in the best possible way. Only when you reach the end of the paths from which you can see horizons, or when you face an unstoppable deterioration, or when the decision is made freely and responsibly, it's possible to consider with ferocity and also with a smile your own end. Yes, human beings should live well and for that same reason also die well.
Nothing and no one can force us to fester in humiliating and unwanted situations. However, there are people who try to stop us from having a good life and a life of good. Those people have been trying to keep us from living well and dying well for centuries. Some continue talking about gods, about his labyrinthine will, about a supposed natural law confined and adjusted to the interests and delusions of those who for centuries and centuries have wanted human beings to be as enslaved and repressed as they are. But no one is forced to stay in life. Life consists precisely of deciding each second, each day, all the moments, what I do and what I stop doing. Freedom is no more and no less than making those decisions permanently. Life is freedom. That's why I claim my freedom to decide also how to live and die.
You and I and all of us breathe, drink, love and sustain ourselves each instant in the will to exist out of love for life.
Existence should always offer one the ability to be happy, conscious and free to dive into the adventure of living. A bottle or a pen are what they are, but human beings are always works in progress: each instant we are writing our own biography, deciding who we are and are not, what we do with ourselves. From that supreme freedom I tell you now that out of a love for life, we can also decide to die, and die well.
You and I and all of us breathe, drink, love and sustain ourselves each instant in the will to exist out of love for life. The person who loves living unconditionally does not fear dying. Therefore it is radically foreign to be forced to live against your will. I'm free, I own my actions and mistakes, my dreams and struggles. And that's why I decide if and how and until when to exist. My life is in my hands and my fundamental obligation is to live well and help make life good among the human beings who live on this planet, since a responsible ethic is based on what I'm doing with my life, as well as what I do for and with others.
If I end my life, it's only, well, out of love for life. And if I had ever helped anyone to die well, it would have been an unequivocal act of love, the last act of affection and love that I could give.
I'll repeat it. You can leave life freely and responsibly without sadness, without fear, just with peace and love for life.
I need to tell you one more time that my love for life and passionate friendship with its possible end remains unscathed and just as strong, now that it is a reality, once the sun has set beyond my horizon and as you read now my last words, my last article.
Thank you. A warm embrace.
Note from Spain's Editorial Director: These words from Fernando Soler came with the email we received with the last article of professor Antonio Aramayona. If this was his wish, let it be so.
Dear Montserrat, with a sorrowful heart, I honor the last request of Antonio Aramayona. The Huffington Post has lost a blogger. Others, much more. I have not met in my already long life anyone who took life into his own hands more than Antonio. His life, in the years during which I had the honor of knowing him, has been an unbreakable will to reconcile what he thought, what he wanted, what he did and what he felt he should do.
True to himself until the end, he left me this last article for the magazine DMD (he was a regular contributor) and he asked me to get in touch with you about the possibility of publishing it on The Huffington Post. His last article. You decide if you think it is appropriate to do so. I can't write much more. What you decide will be fine.
Kind regards,
Fernando Soler
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This post first appeared on HuffPost Spain. It has been translated into English and edited for clarity.