Breaking the chain of life in Bali

Why am I affected by the impending death sentences for the Bali nine members Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan?

I struggle to see us as a human unit when witnessing the lack of humanity in passing death penalties.

Our instincts evolutionarily exist to prolong our lives. Death row creates an inimitable level of anxiety for those in its uncertain certainty. For they have the same sentient capacity that exists in you and I.

As I explored and found comfort in my being, I adopted the philosophy of not doing harm, of promoting life.

The following quote, often incorrectly attributed to Eintein, summarises my view on this issue:

There are only two ways to live your life: one is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is.

One could argue a third way to live, the way the majority live: to see miracles as possible whilst acknowledging their occurrence is uncommon. The quote emboldens the only way to live is to see life as full of wonder, to recognise the inherent beauty in life, to see that every part of our lives and this universe are miracles. That you are this being, in a physical body, whose genes have been gathering through eons, whose odds at being in this moment are so infinitesimally small that it is a supreme amazement to be alive. That our species have evolved through countless years and generations and through many adaptations to be who we are capable of being now. That you are reading these words, and processing them, that these concepts are firing synapses in your brain right now, that they may trigger an idea in response, that they are all a conglomeration of wonder and curiosity to whet our sentient and conscious beings with. That they are a pathway of seeing life and the universe as consisting of miracles.

What hurts me is that we are not seeing the miracles in our lives, in our society, and how we, as a global unit, can have a system of punishment that depletes the core of these miracles in Myuran Sukumaran and in Andrew Chan.

It is because All of life is a miracle that I abhor the taking of lives and replacing them with lifelong voids of hurt for those left behind.

Our consciousness does not feel in black and white. This grey area is where vibrancy lives. How can we presume to fit a black and white concept like the death penalty into the beautiful greyness of life?

Any act that takes away from life is stealing. It is ethically wrong. In The Kite Runner, author Khaled Hosseini articulates:

When you kill a man, you steal a life... When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth…there is no act more wretched than stealing.

When they transported drugs, they had the potential to steal much great life and miracles from future drug users.

In killing with the death penalty we are stealing life. That life that we know as Myuran Sukumaran or Andrew Chan will never exist again.

In killing the lives of others, I feel they are killing some life and miracle in me. It gives scant regard to life and diminishes the environment I grow in. The culture of these actions will inevitably trickle into a society that is more prone to violence and human rights abuses, with a greater tendency to overlook daily miracles.

A justice system that punishes as its main recourse is incongruent with life. Rehabilitation offers the chance to see the beauty and miracles in living. The death penalty rescinds any chance for rehabilitation.

Perhaps, ultimately, rehabilitation on death row allows you to accept the end of your life. To have grown from the person you were when you committed the crime, to the one you are now. To have woken each day with renewed commitment to a life of enlivened living. To grasp the heart and mindset that your life may be ending, that you have lived out the set quota of your days and have performed the best you could.

That you are exactly where you are meant to be. That your life path and the environmental circumstances that engraved you, allowed you to be here. That you allowed yourself to glow, to find meaning, to find redemption, to be reconciled with your situation. That you may comfort your family and friends as much as you can.

That you have come as far as you can go. That you have grown in love, in life. That you have engraved Life in you, and though it is denied you now, you engrave your life through the Love flowing from your heart. That you may find peace.

That you may accept that hypocrisy can meet at the juncture of justice. That our love meets the topsy turvy ways of the world, and it may be impossible to straighten them straightaway. But that our love may strengthen the resolve to respect all of life.

And in the final measure, once the deed is done, we may shed tears as we shift the rubble and uncover the depth of injustices, realising that we have the humanity to give life and to prevent the loss of life for those on death row.

I offer the two of them my hope. I offer them my love.