The ravaging coronavirus epidemic: A choice between life and death!

From time immemorial, one important fact has always been established: life is full of choices. God, the Author of Life, is himself said to have made certain remarkable choices. More profoundly, and rightly so, He chose to create man and to give him freedom, better called "free will" in the philosophical arena.

Humans are condemned to choose. Even if we fail to choose, that very failure (to choose) is itself a choice. Our everyday choices are between dexterity and timidity, humility and pomposity, hospitality and hostility, and, altruism and egoism.

We are, each and all, responsible for the choices we make. Yet, our choices do not affect us alone. That is why we will have to be circumspect and diligent in our choices. The world is no more a global village - a village is too big - it is a global room. Where one person's freedom ends, another person's begins. When we stretch our arms, they end right where the ridge of another person's nose begins.

Every so often, we opt between life and death. This is more expressive when brought to bear on the current terrestrial crisis, namely, the COVID-19 disaster that is rubbishing the top-notch and creme de la creme of society and threatening to completely cleanse and obliterate the entire human species.

What is requisite here is to know that even in this global tragedy, there lies a choice: to live or die to the Coronavirus evil. That choice lies within our individual remits and premises as rational humans created and endowed, among other things, with freedom (freewill).

Anybody who lives has made as much and great a choice as anybody who dies. The decisive, eminent matter is not whether one chooses or not to live or die, but how one chooses to live or die. There is more greatness in the manner of death or life, than in death or life itself.

A case in point is the late 72-year-old Catholic priest in Casnigo, Italy, Giuseppe Berardelli, who chose to die to Coronavirus, after giving his respirator to a younger patient. Even an atheist (one who does not believe in God's existence) will agree that this death is pious, heroic, humane, and gratifying, in nature and manner. That is the greatest choice in dying - dying so that someone else lives!

As for those who will live, the greatest choice in living is living for others - a life of selflessness, altruism, philanthropy, charity! A life devoid of (psychological) egoism, selfishness, self-centeredness! That is the path many medical practitioners, our security forces, and the media fraternity have chosen in these trying times. God bless them, and all who have made very remarkable choices, to, in dying, die for others, and in living, live for others! Thanks. Kudos. God bless!

©J.DUNYO...2020