I enjoy hearing what people wish for. I am not usually hungry or thirsty but I am confident that I could feel hunger and wish for food. I guess we all have more forces, habits and conditions in our lives that we take for granted and would miss if they were gone. Many of my friends and contacts seem satisfied with their lives and don't seem to deeply need or wish for anything.
As I age, I find increasing interest and respect for anything that keeps my interest or the interest of others. I often sit with a man who has been in hospice over and over. He is beyond being able to stand or do most anything for himself. I sit to more or less watch over him while his wife takes a break walking or biking or doing errands. His ability to communicate is quite limited as is his ability to think and reflect or so it seems. He is almost 100 years old. I can imagine that sometime he might express a wish to die or be interested in death. I don't know how he feels about dying.
I have read that humans are more or less incapable of picturing themselves after death and so often emphasize images of an afterlife. When I hear of a self-caused death, it is surprising when the person who took their life is young, that is, younger than, say maybe, 70. Since quite a few parts of the world are experiencing greater human longevity, I wonder if intelligent living will someday include some special idea of allowing a sufficiently old person, who has lived a full life and is experiencing an endless and boring prolonging to take some death pill.
A friend told me that some ancient Greeks could apply to a committee for permission to die. They reportedly had to wait three days for the permission. I just found this with Google:
The people of classical Athens did not regard suicide as a crime committed by the victim. Instead, the Athenians regarded suicide as a crime committed by the instrument that the victim used, or by the victim's hand as opposed to the victim himself. This non-human agent was culpable, just like non-human agents were blamed for accidental deaths. Although suicide victims were innocent, inanimate agents were guilty. In Sophocles' Ajax, for example, the sword that the hero turned upon himself was blamed for his death. The Athenian response to suicide was more about objects than it was about people.
