Saying No

Ally posted about the difficulty in saying no. I read her article and found that it didn’t really hit home with me.

Not because it was written badly. It was well written. But it just didn’t connect. I know I am good at saying no.

In a resource limited situation, hard decisions need to be made. Some of those decisions will be life or death in nature. We need to think about those today. If you can convince yourself that you are capable of saying “no” in those situations, then you are a stronger person than I am.

To help prepare myself, I run different situations to decide what I am willing to do, what I must do, and what I can’t do.

Let’s take a simple one: a couple that knows you but whom you don’t know stops at the red line and places their newborn child there. They yell up to you, “Please save our child!” before turning and walking away, in tears.

They aren’t asking for help for themselves. They know you will say “no.” Instead they have left an innocent at your doorstep.

You have the following choices:

• Do nothing until the baby dies of exposure or is killed by something.
• Take the child into your care, reducing the supplies your people are depending on, adding a drain on your people’s resources.
• You kill the baby outright.

What do you do? Is it an easy choice? It isn’t easy for me to choose. I also have to deal with my family. How will they respond? How will I say “no” to them.

An even simpler example of this is personal. I have been saying “no” to pets since before I got married to my current wife. I have allergies that are not helped by animal fur. So they ask for a dog; I say no. They ask for a cat. I say no. They get a rabbit and have it in the house before I can say “no.”

How do I say “No” now that the animal is in the house? That was 5 rabbits ago. Three of them passed after expensive vet bills. My kid is at college, my wife attempts to care for one of the rabbits, and Ally cares for the other. Regardless, it didn’t matter that I said “no”; they just ignored me.

Will you be able to kill that baby when your spouse is in tears begging you to bring the innocent child into your care?

Here is a different one. You are out on a scavange hunt. You have taken one of your neighbor’s kids with you. You have been working with this family to the joint benefit of both groups.

During the hunt, the kid is badly injured. He is unlikely to survive his injuries. You have limited choices:

• Do you put yourself at risk to drag/carry the kid back to home base, knowing he might die in the process or bring the raiders down upon you?
• Do you leave him there to die?
• Do you leave him there, book it for home base, and hope you get back to him before he dies?
• Do you use your medical gear to make him comfortable, knowing that gear is never going to be replaced?
• Do you kill him to put him out of his misery?

Now compound this with having the neighbor with you. He is begging you to save his kid, to do risky things, to use your resources to save his kid. Can you still say “no”?

How about this one? Your kid is injured. They are dying. There is nothing you can do to save them; the most you can do is extend their life, and in doing so, use irreplaceable supplies, and they will be in pain the entire time.

Are you willing to kill your child? Are you willing to let them suffer? Are you willing to kill your group in six months for another day with your child?

I know that I don’t want to make that decision. I know that my wife would hate me if I didn’t do everything in my power to save my child, damn the costs.

If you think you can say “no,” then I don’t think you have thought about the hard choices. I agree with you; you are good at saying no. You are likely better prepared to say no than most people. Now stretch yourself and find scenarios where it would be difficult to say no. Scenarios where saying no is the right choice, but you will be hated by your loved ones for making that choice.

Then look me in the eye and say, “I can say “no.”” without having that niggling feeling in the back of your head that maybe there will come a time when you wont.