While attending my sister’s wedding, my two-year-old son and I had just finished taking a father and son nap and were walking out of our hotel room in search of my wife and my other son. We decided to check the pool. When we got there, I saw two unattended toddler-age girls playing dangerously close to the edge of the pool. Before I had a chance to find their parents, try and move them, or do something else, they jump into the pool together. As I jumped fully clothed into the pool to save them, I heard another splash right behind me. My son followed me into the pool! Almost instinctively, I swam around and got my son from the floor of the pool, put him on the edge and sternly told him to stay put. I screamed for help, took another breath, and pushed off the wall of the pool to try and save the girls. I got them, both unconscious, to the side of the pool. I sat my son in a poolside chair and try to give CPR to the girls alternating one after the other. I screamed for help again. Finally, help arrived to call 911 and the paramedics got there shortly. They declared one of the girls dead at the site. The other one was rushed to hospital and may be in a coma. My son was traumatized, but is in perfect physical condition. I was weeping and shaking and realizing that my choice between who to save and when and how leaves my sense of right and wrong all shook up. I cried tears of joy and gratitude as I held my live son and those very same tears were excruciatingly painful realizations that an innocent little girl had just died and, despite my best efforts, I had something to do with it.
Thankfully, this story is pure fiction. But, it should serve to remind us that everything we do is not so easily parsed out into neat, guilt-free categories of right and wrong. Nothing could be truer than when we deal with humans, especially children. The “deals” we strike in one direction or another always fall short of our greatest dreams and aspirations. So, it seems, that when we attempt to do our “best” — or, to do what is “right” — we have a plethora of tragically imperfect options. But in that tragedy there is still hope, joy and love. The difference is that it is not naïve, intoxicated, or simplistic.
Insofar as human action that can be judged morally, ethically, or otherwise, the meaning that moralistic language attempts to express will always be fundamentally imperfect and, therefore, tragic. But that tragic sense should not paralyze us or make us cranky and depressed. If anything it should make our world more open to complexity, difficulty, and beauty, as it already is.
There will be casualties in many forms and to various degrees because of our decisions. That is just a fact of life. Every dollar we spend, for example, is a dollar that could have gone elsewhere, to a better cause, perhaps. Every hour is an hour that could have been “better.” But the most important question is whether our intuitive sense of “our best” and “what is right” can measure up to those complex human “guilt feelings” that reside in our conscience and, ultimately, in God.
When we confront those sentiments about our lives we will often find ourselves in the posture of mixed feelings where our tears are not completely happy or sad. This sometimes gut wrenching reality should keep us humble, careful, intelligent, and above all — loving. No matter who wins or loses (however we understand that) and regardless of what we do or don’t do, we should not take to boastful or mournful dispositions. Life isn’t that simple or superficial. Instead we should continue to chase after the love, hope, and joy that are sober and honest, I think.
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