Fundamentally…

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My Book Club Prompts, which I have put together and decided to blog it too

Prompts:

extreme pacifist

Eating in eating out

How to grow roses

There are times when we have to decide exactly the type of person we are or hope to be.   It can be a truly conscious decision, but we may not realise that until we are faced with something that can fundamentally affect us.

As children we ‘just are’ until we are moulded and then we mimic.  We have our own nature and then we may or may not be nurtured, depending on the family that we grow up in.   As we continue to develop and mimic we then begin to make our own decisions and our nature may become more prevalent. 

What if we have a nature that is bad or evil can we decide to change that and decide to be or do good. 

What if our nature is good and saint like, can we do things which are bad even murderous?

It depends……

Like most things in life, whether to eat in or eat out, it’s a choice but depends on motivation, money and desire.  It depends on circumstance and context.

When I was younger, living at home as a teenager, I would do any amount of housework, but I hated gardening, with a passion.

Fast forward a few years later to buying and owning my own home and I suddenly want to learn how to grow roses and fill my garden with pretty things.  I buy books and I educate myself how to do things I never thought I had any interest in. 

As we grow, we build.  We build ourselves, our opinions, our knowledge, our wants and desires.  Sometimes though, we just conform to the social rules.  Conformity is good as it gives us social rules and so avoids chaos in a lot of situations, like traffic lights.  We know when to stop and when to go, otherwise we would be all crashing into each other, and that would not be good.

We conform to the rules at home, at school, at work, but what about conforming to orders?  What if conforming to orders goes against your beliefs.  Should a person’s sense of self and their beliefs matter more than conforming to orders?

If you were told you had to go to war and kill another person would you do it because you have been told to?  If it went against everything you believed in, would you do it?

Desmond Doss was such a man whose belief and faith in God was to not harm another person.  He was conscripted during world war II, but refused to kill anyone.  He was a conscientious objector and he was taunted and badly treated by his superiors and his peers, but still, he held true to his beliefs. 

He went into battle with not a gun or grenade, but a bible in his hand and faith in his heart.   He was awarded medals of Honour for his bravery for saving over 75 soldiers, who would have otherwise died.  Laying wounded on the battlefield he ran and picked them up, carried them and carried them down a ridge to safety.  Hacksaw Ride is a movie made about this man.  Some may say he was foolish, some may have called him a coward, but he was a hero.  He was an extreme pacifist and because of it, he saved many lives instead of taking them.

I guess we all have to choose how we live our lives the best we can, without denying our true beliefs, whilst at the same time, not causing any harm to others.   I am not saying we can go through life unharmed or without ever feeling hurt, or indeed without ever hurting anyone.  That is inevitable on a small scale, but the big fundamental things, we must hold true, so long as we are not wilfully or maliciously hurting anyone.