When We Stand on Guard, Even in Certain Death

“All is fair in love and war.”

. . .

Here is the age old moral dilemma: would you kill one person to save five?

What about this one: would you kill five people to save five?

Of course you could say, these five people I am saving are close and dear to me, I will save them no matter the cost. These five people are incredibly smart and talent and will accomplish great things in life if they had the chance. These five people are fighting for the righteous ideology, the one that will save the world.

What if one of those five was a young earl, born of a military family, eager above all else to fulfill the family tradition and loyal to his country? His charming grace and good manners had won him favorable opinions even from those who did not agree with his position.

What if one of those in the other five was an extremely talented speaker, rallying behind the unshakable ideals of freedom and liberty? Even if his motives were shaky and half his supporters had more practical purposes in mind, were they not noble goals?

As I muster up my virtual troops in an Age-of-Empires-like game readying for the next attack against the “bandit chief,” so, too, must a real general have, throughout the ages, prepared his army for an uncertain fate. Perhaps he did not want to fight the war. Perhaps, more than anything else, he did want to sit by the river and fish with his hookless fishing rod.

But, as with all things history, one must decide. Despite John Rowe’s best efforts at peacekeeping, he could not preserve the fine sanctuary where the regulars dined with him and the townspeople kept on their smuggling trade unhindered. And the one hundred and eight heroic warriors forced to leave their hometowns and band together defying an unjust government? They could not hide in their mountain base forever, whiling away the days.

Their leader decided to obey the emperor in the end. Even if it meant one hundred and eight deaths.

Is there really the right decision, the right thing to do?

In twenty years, the right people were the Bostonians who had their Pope Day mobs and overthrew tea into the ocean. History only favors the victorious, and soon their sacrifices are the only ones that matter, their concerns the only ones worth mentioning, their hopes and dreams the only ones to be pursued.

But in the moment, perhaps we can only make the best of two horrible choices and map out our course using the painful moral compass in our hearts.

. . .

I am a horrible decision-maker.

There is no hiding around it. Whenever there are choices to be made, I strive to retain all of them as long as possible. I am the girl who kept multiple bookmarks in her “choose your own adventure” books so she could go back and read every possible ending. I am the girl who has five different variations of the same item that does basically the same thing in a game, because I could not decide which one to pick.

I, too, am the one who always sympathizes with the villain, because what if they had a really good reason for what they did and who am I to judge? I do not want to make anyone unhappy, and yet most of all I do not want to be unhappy.

They say you can’t make everyone in the world happy all the time, but how could I choose who to make happier and whose hopes to crush? Maybe the one who I care about more? But how could I figure that out when all I want to do is curl up and fade away slowly?

If only my misery could bring forth something good.

Then again, I suppose it wouldn’t be called misery, would it?

I know I am hurting everyone in my impasse, but even knowing so I am indecisive as ever.

. . .

The night before Joseph Warren was supposed to take up command as general of a fledgling rebel troop, he stayed up the entire night and fell asleep the next day until noon. Perhaps, even until then, his subconscious was not sure what to do.

But when he woke up, he knew.

He marched up the hill, not as a general, but as a footsoldier, to his death.