The Time When Your Character is Defined
A few years ago, I found myself playing a video game on my iPad called This War of Mine.
The game, inspired by the 1992–96 Siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War, differs from most war-themed video games by focusing on the civilian experience of war rather than frontline combat. Characters have to make many difficult decisions in order to survive everyday dangers. There are various endings for each character, depending on the decisions made in the game.
It is one fucking depressing game. Characters get sick, are constantly hungry, must go out and scavenge for materials and food. Sometimes, you resort to stealing food or medicine and your character gets incredibly depressed. If you push them too hard in that direction, they go from severely depressed to broken and stop functioning. Many of the characters end up becoming so despondent with the constant hustle of survival that they commit suicide.
If there is a theme that keeps returning to me during this time in our history, it is that when the going gets tough, most people become the monsters from whom we need to hide.
We don’t get to pick the times when we are tested. We don’t have control over those moments in history when who we are as humans is defined. All we can do is choose in those moments what kind of mettle of which we are made.
I’m further reminded at this time in history of my grandfather’s favorite poem. He died when I was thirteen but before then he gifted me with a book of poetry, an act that defied everything I understood the man to be and deepened my young perspective on manhood, resilience, and poetry.
It has since and continued to be my single favorite work of poetry.
How Did You Die?
by Edmund Vance Cooke
Did you tackle that trouble that came your way
With a resolute heart and cheerful?
Or hide your face from the light of day
With a craven soul and fearful?
Oh, a trouble's a ton, or a trouble's an ounce,
Or a trouble is what you make it,
And it isn't the fact that you're hurt that counts,
But only how did you take it?
You are beaten to earth? Well, well, what's that?
Come up with a smiling face.
It's nothing against you to fall down flat,
But to lie there -- that's disgrace.
The harder you're thrown, why the higher you bounce;
Be proud of your blackened eye!
It isn't the fact that you're licked that counts,
It's how did you fight -- and why?
And though you be done to the death, what then?
If you battled the best you could,
If you played your part in the world of men,
Why, the Critic will call it good.
Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce,
And whether he's slow or spry,
It isn't the fact that you're dead that counts,
But only how did you die?
So, once again and over and over, I will not give in to panic. I will be thoughtful in my response to the current situation. I will pay attention to the facts as related by the WHO and wholly ignore the histrionics of those whose heads have been self-decapitated and are running around looking for people to blame for something we could not have anticipated.
I will check in on those whom I love. I will not use this time of imposed social distancing as an opportunity to slack and justify it as self-care. I will go outside and go to work (if there is work to be done). I will create things and share them. I will be cautious but trusting, firm but compassionate.
It isn’t the fact that you’re hurt that counts but only, how did you take it?
