Choose wisely

When my father was a mere eleven years old, he left home and entered a military academy whose expressed purpose was to train the next generation of military officers in a China being attacked by Japan. I don't know for sure if he ever saw his parents again, but I know it was years after their deaths before he even knew they had died. In the intervening years, China had turned on itself and broken down into a civil war between Nationalist and Communist factions. Family, friendship, civil society, was torn apart. My father, coming of age in this chaos and tapped to become a bomber pilot, refused that assignment and requested he be assigned as a fighter pilot instead. His rationale was that he would willingly face another pilot, even one of his former classmates and friends, in one-on-one combat in the skies to defend the sovereignty of Taiwan, to where the Nationalist government had withdrawn, but he refused to drop bombs on civilians and former fellow citizens on the mainland. I share this story to say this: though the events of the world may be beyond your control and you find your life swept along in the massive tides of history, you still have choices you can make. Always. And those choices matter. Big or small, choices borne of compassion and duty and justice and doing what is right, to the best that you can determine, will ripple out and will be felt. But choices made out of genuine love and curiosity for your fellow humans, each living out their short lives on this singular planet like tiny sparks of light against a canvas of infinite darkness, will always always shine brightest of all. There is such a thing as evil, but it cannot, will not triumph if even one light shines. It will not. You have a choice. Every day. Every moment. Curiosity over fear. Compassion over anger. Courage over selfishness. Love over all else. Choose wisely.