Throwing out his life like garbage

Yesterday outside the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) building in Jalan Bukit Petaling, Malaysia, a man set himself on fire. He died nine hours later at the Kuala Lumpur Hospital. (Link – careful, there’s a picture.)

I mention this only because the UNHCR is where Dawn works. Truthfully, I’m only writing because of the picture in that news article. You don’t normally see pictures of people on fire. It made the event more real to me.

Regardless, I feel emotionally detached from the whole thing. I don’t know much about the man, but there are plenty of people more desperate than him who did not feel the need to set themselves ablaze. I suppose my take on this is the following: he had the one thing we truly possess in this world, a life, and he chose to throw it away. He’s not worth any further consideration.