Completed His Life

This piece in the NY Times yesterday clearly struck a chord: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/opinion/daniel-kahneman-death-suicide.html

Kahneman was a writer, professor, psychologist, Nobel prize guy. He chose to go to Switzerland to end his life last month.

At 90, the article said, Professor Kahneman thought that he had completed his life.

Here is the link to the announcement of his death from Princeton University, where he taught.

My friend Gail sent me the story early in the morning. Let me tell you, there is nothing better than having a friend who likes to think deeply about these kinds of things. I sunk my teeth into the article and returned a couple of times to gnaw on the comments.

Wo, people really like to talk about a person’s choice to check out of Ye Olden Planet Earthe.

I loved Kahneman’s choice. I have seen way, way too much prolongation of life, mostly because we are a death-averse society. We don’t talk about it, we don’t plan for it, we spend our lives pretending it’s not going to happen. Death makes us itchy and scared and willing to do almost anything to avoid it.

When we get older and things start to go south, mentally and physically, we start the process of grasping for ways to stay alive. The medical and pharmaceutical worlds love this, when life turns into endless trips to the doctor’s office and the drug store.

I remember glancing at some of the charts of the folks entering hospice care and seeing page after page of medications a person was taking. Three pages of medications! What I found working in a hospital, hospice setting and nursing home is that very often people didn’t even know what they were taking pills for, and many of them, of course, could no longer keep track of their medications. Elaborate systems need to be put in place so that Gramps takes all the right pills at all the right times.

Who, exactly, owns our lives?

Based on the comments, and I apologize if you are unable to access the piece about Kahneman. Let me know if you want to read it and I’ll send you a gift article. Based on the comment section, people have strong opinions about whether or not we should be allowed to die when we want to die.

I feel both fortunate and proud to live in Vermont, a state that not only allows a person to choose to go, but also grants that option to a person coming to Vermont— there is no longer a residency requirement.

About his life and work, Kahneman said this: “Other people happen to respect it and say that this is for the benefit of humanity,” he said. “I just like to get up in the morning because I like the work.”

So refreshing, to have been so accomplished and so humble at the same time.

It appeared that, because Kahneman was heading toward days when getting up and working was no longer going to be an option, he decided, at age 90, to bid adieu to life on Earth.

Why all the ruckus?

Why did the poor man have to travel all the way to Switzerland to end his life?

Why are we all so afraid to die? So very angry about death? Why so judgmental when a person has decided when to say when? Why is life valued, literally at endless cost, over death?

Probably because most of us haven’t spent much time studying death. As a person who has learned to channel those who have left the embodied experience and returned to pure consciousness, I can tell you that the whole thing is both a big deal and not a big deal at all. It’s a big deal in that important things happen in regard to your spiritual evolution and it’s not a big deal because you come in and out of incarnations lots of times on your path to evolution. You have already lived and died many, many times.

This information has been channeled endlessly, going back to the 1800s. Automatic writers like Jane Roberts, Maya Cointreau, Esther Hicks, Paul Selig have taken notes from the spirit realm and what they report is remarkably consistent. So much so that if you read enough of these books you begin to understand what truth really is.

It looks like this:

You are not separate from Source / God.

You create your own reality through thoughts, beliefs, and emotion.

Love is the highest frequency — fear is the illusion.

Forgiveness and compassion free you.

You are an eternal soul, incarnating for growth.

You have access to inner guidance and higher wisdom.

You are powerful, divine, and limitless.

The purpose of life is joy, growth, and remembering who you are.

Not bad, right? This is good, juicy, interesting stuff. And it appears over and over in channeled texts. And it is precisely what I find when I channel people. And I am not a witch or wiccan or elf and I don’t have a crystal ball or a magic wand, I am a regular human who has had a minor near death occurrence who cares deeply about life and death.

Stop all that stupid thinking right now, that talking about death is morbid or that connecting with those who have died is woo woo. Or even that we are not allowed to talk about death. Are we all really that lacking in imagination and curiosity?

If you refuse to think about life outside the temporary embodied condition, refuse to spend time contemplating what happens after we die, you will make yourself suffer, you make death way harder than it has to be.

Death is as much a transition as birth, and I’ve heard it’s actually easier to die than it is to be born. I’ve also learned that not many in the soul realm want to return here because everything is so fraught, emotionally. Life here is very hard, our society is riddled with distractions; it takes a very long time to finally step onto the pathway of spiritual growth, a long time to finally get what this is all about.

It sounds like Kahneman understood that his work here was complete. That’s a very evolved mindset: my soul did what it came to express. We live in a world permeated with pharmaceutical and medical options for prolongation of life, to say, no thank you, I’ve lived a good life, I’m ready to go is a mature, graceful decision.

From the perspective of the soul, suicide is not the great tragedy we make it out to be. If a person decides that life here is too difficult or complete and they choose to move on, there is no penance, no retribution. No one entering the soul realm gets in trouble for choosing to die, that’s just another dumb human/religious construct. On the contrary, those who suicide, especially at a young age, are met with compassion and care on the other side. They are welcomed home just like any other soul, then the work begins. There is a time for rest and review and when they eventually return here again they will simply begin where they left off.

Sure, it’s tragic for you and me when we know or love someone who chooses to die, but we’re not here to save anyone. Our own soul project is enough to keep us busy every day of our lives and it should not involve interfering with someone else’s life path or soul journey.

Love is the highest frequency and we are all beloved by a Source, Power, Light that is of love, only. Again, garbage human construct, this belief that God is a punitive entity. Job security for priests, who, in truth, don’t really need job security because they work for the Vatican, the biggest mafia on the planet.

It’s a very good idea to think carefully about your own line in the sand. When to say when in regards to your quality of life. And to research your options, in case the time comes when you are ready to go. The emphasis here on earth is on longevity, we love to think that the longer something lasts, the better. Why? Where is the joy in spending the last ten years of your life living in a nursing care facility, playing bingo on Tuesday and fingerpainting on Thursday? We prolong life endlessly, but we do not offer quality of life to our seniors. If one is very wealthy and can afford to stay at home and hire care, one might be able to maintain quality of life, but not many can and a lot of folks who provide that kind of care are getting sent back to their homeland these days. Most people aren’t interested in that kind of hard work. The vast majority of older Americans end up incarcerated in some kind of understaffed facility, wondering daily why they’re still alive.

There was one thing in particular that stood out for me in this article: “There are serious grounds for opposing such an extension of the right to die. Perhaps some older people who say that they are tired of living would feel more positive about their lives if they received psychological counseling.”

I disagree.

Perhaps some older people who say they are tired of living would feel more positive about their lives if they received spiritual counseling.

Creating and sustaining meaning in life is an existential project. It is the work of the soul and the domain of chaplains and other spiritual care providers. Old people don’t need another diagnosis, they need support figuring out how to continue to build a meaningful life throughout all of their days, and rarely, if ever, is this offered.

Hospitals have chaplains, universities, prisons, fire departments, hospice care, there are chaplains in many realms of life, but most senior living facilities do not have chaplains on staff.

Welcome to my current obsession: this website is a first draft and the services are not available yet, but I am going to use every goddamned ounce of energy I have between now and my last breath to solve this problem.

I love you all, now go and plan your death. xomo