23. WE’RE THE HERO, MAYBE

‘Fairy Tales always have a happy ending.’ That depends…on whether you are Rumpelstiltskin or the Queen.

-  Jane Yolen, Briar Rose.

On an Oh-Dark-Thirty raid in Kandahar one summer, our force decked out in night-vision goggles and the target compound painted red by the lasers from our rifles, I overheard a soldier remark that we must seem like aliens to the Afghans. Some high-tech Borg-like adversary come to assimilate them.

Except, I thought at the time, the Afghans all knew we were there to help.

Or did they? Did those Fighting Age Males whose families we kicked out of bed in the middle of the night as we searched for Taliban think we were helping?

Maybe.

Or, maybe it’s all a matter of perspective. Because from the villain’s perspective, they are the hero. Thanos doesn’t think he’s the bad guy, he isn’t killing half the universe.

He’s saving it from overcrowding and starvation and chaos.

So, which am I? The hero, or the villain?

I don’t have an answer for that, except to continually hold myself to account about whether the way I serve others is doing more harm or good in the world.