First, about Arwen. I've always believed that Arwen's CHOICE was made when she laid herself down and died. Until then, she still could have chosen to take a ship to Valinor and remain immortal. I've always believed that her journey to Lorien was when she did her "soul-searching" to decide whether she would die or take a ship to the West. There was the pull of "Arda" trying to keep her alive, and her love for Aragorn pulling her away to see him again, beyond the Veil, in the Void.
As for the general decision to "croak," I think there is an inevitable "disconnection" with the world as it is. What I mean is that the older you get, the less you understand where society is at, and where it is going. I realize that sounds rather cynical, but I think about my grandparents. When my father's parents were first married, they lived in a (rented) log cabin without any plumbing or floors. Grandpa hunted and Grandma went into the woods to gather berries and other edibles. They grew a garden for the veggies etc. By the time my Grandmother died, humans had walked on the Moon, and this Internet site existed (and, in fact, I was already a member, under another name). That's a huge transition. I can only think that, eventually, you just can't keep up. It's time to go away and leave room for the people who can deal with it better than you can. Arwen is an exception. She does not fit the rule.
As for Merry and Pippin, I'm not so sure they "chose" to give up the ghost so much as they knew it was soon to be their time. There is nothing like age to realize that you long for those "college" days when you were young and healthy and (dare I say it, sexy!) The scars of a life create aches and pains that never really heal. They're imprinted on your soul, and you become more cautious, more wary. In the meantime, the World continues to progress. People's concerns just aren't what they were during the 'dark times." To dare quote (or misquote) Dylan Thomas (I'm not sure,) "You can't go home again."
You eventually just can't understand what thing's are about in the world you are living in, and it's time to go. If you did undersand, you wouldn't be ready to leave yet.
How depressing is it to realize that eventually, the world will out-grow you, and your only option is to turn away from it, to leave it entirely.
I can only quote Gandalf from "The Last Debate" in RotK.
Quote:
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Other evils there are that may come, for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherin we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.
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