[CM] December: 01 - Oscar Wilde Quote
Dec. 20th, 2006 12:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
standardblack"When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers."
-Oscar Wilde, An Ideal husband, 1893
I never asked to be a leader.
I fought it until I couldn’t anymore, and even when the mantle became mine to take up to tip the scales of life and death in my favor, it wasn’t a job I wanted. I wasn’t cut out to take charge, I couldn’t make those tough decisions. I couldn’t do it because I couldn’t live with the repercussions. To make those kinds of choices...to do what had to be done in the name of the greater good...
Being a leader, a top dog, means being able to make those hard calls and sleep at night. You have to be able to let the bad decisions go and tough enough to resist the demons of the tragic inevitabilities that stalk you...the things you couldn’t help or stop, the mistakes you never made but just happened anyway.
I’m not that man...I can’t let the bad calls and the tragedies go. It’s different in the medical field...when things go wrong, you can usually figure out why. Even the mysteries are founded in textbook knowledge. You know that allergies to anesthetic can kill a patient suddenly, and come as abruptly and unexpectedly as you please. You know the complications that arise in certain cases, you know that the human body is a maze of puzzles and mysteries that you’ll never fully understand. It’ll always surprise you with its capacity for miracles and tragedy.
Even the most idealistic physician understands that medicine may be a science, but surgery is an art...and the two put together are a volatile cocktail that can erupt in your face at any time. It’s the ‘when’ that surprises, that catches you off guard. You’re intellectually aware of death’s specter, but you never *feel* it until you meet it for the first time.
I never asked to be a leader...but then I became one, when I didn’t want to be.
Now, They’ve taken it away from me...my place, my responsibilities...and my people.
My people...I never wanted people. I prayed every day that rescue would come and stop them from ever being *my* people.
But now they are mine...somewhere along the line, they all started becoming names on a list of individuals who weren’t exactly friends, and were more than acquaintances. They were people that belonged to me...mine to help, mine to hurt, mine to protect.
In the last seventy-odd days, the forty five...sorry, forty six survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 ceased to be statistics, and became people to me. *My* people.
Now...they’re not anymore.
I never asked to be a leader...but then I became one.
I don’t believe in God, and I don’t believe in Fate...but I do believe I’m going to get out of here. And when I do?
Nothing’s going to stop me from getting back to my people.
Muse: Jack Shephard
Fandom: LOST
Words: 480
-Oscar Wilde, An Ideal husband, 1893
I never asked to be a leader.
I fought it until I couldn’t anymore, and even when the mantle became mine to take up to tip the scales of life and death in my favor, it wasn’t a job I wanted. I wasn’t cut out to take charge, I couldn’t make those tough decisions. I couldn’t do it because I couldn’t live with the repercussions. To make those kinds of choices...to do what had to be done in the name of the greater good...
Being a leader, a top dog, means being able to make those hard calls and sleep at night. You have to be able to let the bad decisions go and tough enough to resist the demons of the tragic inevitabilities that stalk you...the things you couldn’t help or stop, the mistakes you never made but just happened anyway.
I’m not that man...I can’t let the bad calls and the tragedies go. It’s different in the medical field...when things go wrong, you can usually figure out why. Even the mysteries are founded in textbook knowledge. You know that allergies to anesthetic can kill a patient suddenly, and come as abruptly and unexpectedly as you please. You know the complications that arise in certain cases, you know that the human body is a maze of puzzles and mysteries that you’ll never fully understand. It’ll always surprise you with its capacity for miracles and tragedy.
Even the most idealistic physician understands that medicine may be a science, but surgery is an art...and the two put together are a volatile cocktail that can erupt in your face at any time. It’s the ‘when’ that surprises, that catches you off guard. You’re intellectually aware of death’s specter, but you never *feel* it until you meet it for the first time.
I never asked to be a leader...but then I became one, when I didn’t want to be.
Now, They’ve taken it away from me...my place, my responsibilities...and my people.
My people...I never wanted people. I prayed every day that rescue would come and stop them from ever being *my* people.
But now they are mine...somewhere along the line, they all started becoming names on a list of individuals who weren’t exactly friends, and were more than acquaintances. They were people that belonged to me...mine to help, mine to hurt, mine to protect.
In the last seventy-odd days, the forty five...sorry, forty six survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 ceased to be statistics, and became people to me. *My* people.
Now...they’re not anymore.
I never asked to be a leader...but then I became one.
I don’t believe in God, and I don’t believe in Fate...but I do believe I’m going to get out of here. And when I do?
Nothing’s going to stop me from getting back to my people.
Muse: Jack Shephard
Fandom: LOST
Words: 480
