Manners Are Never Used Enough

 

            Given a choice, what would you choose? Would you be moral? Would you be selfish? Would you decide at all? I shall provide you will an example. Say, for chance, that you were locked in a room and chained to a pipe on the wall, with a corpse in the corner, a breathing man across the room who was also chained, three inch deep water filled the room, a live electrical cord hung about an inch above the water and was falling slowly toward it, and a knife was sitting at your feet. How would you proceed?

            You could touch the wire and try to push it up away from the water to save the other man, but sacrifice yourself. Although, you may not succeed. The other man could die too. And you would never know if they survived or not.

            You could stay put and do nothing, thus waiting for you and the other man to die together. Does he want to die too?

            You could stab yourself with the knife �" ignore the wire altogether. Hopefully you will die quickly and won’t bleed out slowly. But does the other person want to be entrapped in your blood? Does he want to watch you die? And hear your screams?

            You could throw the knife to the other man and him choose his own fate. And wait for the wire to reach the water and kill you. Or touch the wire and possibly die.

            Whatever you decide, the other man’s fate is tied with yours. You may have never met before. And you may never meet again. And you will probably die no matter what choice you make. Could you even accept that fate? Let alone make the choice?

 

            I set down my pen and picked up the paper I had just written. I held on to it for what seemed like an eternity. Then with tears streaming down my cheeks I put the corner in the flame and watched the page burn. I still didn’t let go. I couldn’t do it.

            The flames licked at my fingers and burnt my hand. The pain was immense. I felt like my skin was melting off of my hand, exposing bone to the elements. A breeze ran through the room, tugging at the flames. It lifted the smell of burning paper to my nose. Following shortly was the smell of burning flesh �" my flesh. The tears fell harder but I didn’t release the last bit of the page I was shielding from the flame. Eventually it got what it wanted and devoured the paper, leaving only a small pile of ash behind.

            I gathered the ash and put it into a small glass vial. I added the cork and sealed it with wax from the candle. The molten wax dripped off the top of the cork and down the sides of the vial leaving streaks of red visible against the black ash. Finally I wrapped a string around the neck of the vial and tied it around my own neck. I thought to myself . . .

 

            What he did for me was written into these ashes. These are his ashes now; the last essence of heroism. How did he manage to decide? Why did he choose to save my life? I don’t think I ever will.

 

            I whispered a sweet thank you into the bottle, and blew out the candle. There, in that chair, I sit; waiting to be removed from my trance and thinking only of the stranger who saved my life by taking their own.

 

Through the clouds, he smiles at me and whispers a final thank you before crossing the golden bridge into the Land of the Selfless.