• If a man can be killed from over a mile away with a single round of ammunition, without the ability to ever stand witness to the man who killed him using any of God's given five senses, who should be given praise?

    We all one day dream of a painless demise. If a man could not smell death, he would have no reason to fear it. Without seeing death, there is no reason to move. Some men will tell you that you can taste the end. This makes those certain souls on death row, who through nerves of steel jittered "no final meal request" on that scroll of belittling government transcript particularly witty. Smart, even. Because in order to be in a position to taste death, you must've first touched it. Nobody touches their own passing.

    Aristotle once said "it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it", and I believe he was correct. For example, lets talk about media coverage of wars. Televisions are only addressed cynically by those who have experienced pain from one. The true question is whether or not you acknowledged that pain as sorrow or sympathy; whether you felt it at all. As humans we are controlled by instinct, desire, and the instinct to chase desire. You are unexpectedly faced with an inexplicable burden. Your television flashes with the all too familiar sight of a national emergency. Is it your problem? That is irrelevant, for as the wise have detailed, you are now faced by two of the most underestimated presences known to man; the metaphorical, and the metaphysical.

    Right this very second, you are forced to not only pick a side with no explicit definition of truth or false, but you are also forced to categorize your decision. The sniper versus the victim. Just versus reason. Specific intertwining blanket statements that have not only been thrust upon our web of comfort, but used as a point of structure. Millions of men and women are sent to war twenty-four seven, three sixty-five. Why are there only two options? Is yes or no ever going to really be good enough?

    I am one of many who exercise my right to use a third option. I could just as easily disregard this entire article and profanitize the assumption that the only people who truly support war are those who are already at war, but I will not. Because contrary to what our politicians want us to believe, I can have my cake and eat it too. Metaphorically our sons are sent to war, and metaphysically they die. If your son really was sent to war, it would no longer be metaphorical but it would, in exchange, become metaphysical.

    It is not my responsibility to tell you whether or not a person shot during war is justified. I cannot under any circumstance make a hero out of a terrorist, which theoretically voids the question in the first paragraph. However if I were asked with my freedom on the line whether or not a man could hear death, I would respond with the following.

    A professor once told me that your average passerine mockingbird could pick up on the distinct trademarks of a .22 caliber bullet so quickly, that it'd match the tone of the chamber recoil almost precisely before the bullet fully finished firing. Once again we are faced with a flip of a coin. If a man chose to hear the bullet, he'd pass on. He'd become the victim of somebody else's rules of engagement. If he chose to accept the mockingbird, he'd achieve perfection. A sixth sense of serenity, that voids the first five altogether.

    In a world with so much negativity, would it really hurt to not assume burden, but rather assume that the person in question held close to your heart under any context, heard the mockingbird?