The Tunnel Light
Inability to Choose
When I was in primary school, in 4th or 5th grade I think, the teacher of the subject ethics asked us a question, which I was not able to answer. Before that, she told us: ''Imagine that you are sitting on a train. It's an old train with those tiny compartments for six people. All seats around you are taken, only the one next to you is still free. Who would you offer the seat to:
A homosexual
A HIV positive prostitute
A black skinned person
A Vietnam runaway
A former convict?''
The question always seemed strange to me. The subject was ethics; so why in the world would someone ask a child such a question? Adults told us that it was because they wanted us, the children, become aware of the injustices that happened around the world to people who were slightly different than the majority and were not at fault for their difference. However, I asked myself if what the adults were doing was actually true and fair. They say every man and woman irrespective of skin colour, disease, sexual orientation or mind, is an equal to any other man and woman in the world.
If that was true, why did they point them out as something special? Something strange? Something you should carefully think about before choosing?
Why did they want us to choose at all?
Why did they implant such thoughts into children's minds?
I did not understand it.
My parents, who happened to be homosexuals, always thought me to accept people the way they are and not looking at them in a curious or even strange way. They taught me to be tolerant and open minded.
Which is why I did not understand why the teacher asked us such a strange question. I could not answer it. I was not able to. Because I did not have it in me to choose between people that are supposed to be equals to me.
And now, many years later, while I'm running through the dark, almost demolished underground tunnel, screaming for help, calling his name, and people with bloody faces rushing to the direction I came from, I realize that I still cannot answer the question.
Because if I had answered that question hours before my arm was bleeding and my feet were rushing through the apocalypse to find him, I would have been dead now.
The inability to decide who is safer for me and who is not, saved my life.
Accepting people and letting them be around me helped me to survive.
Let's just hope now that I will survive without them for a few minutes.