Shikata Ga Nai

There are eight people in the world whose lives I value over my own. In any sudden catastrophic situation or crisis requiring an instant (possibly instinctive) decision whether or not to give up my own life so that theirs can be saved, I wouldn't hesitate longer than a heartbeat to do it for any or all of these people I love to death. Naturally I would never simply type their names up for the world to know as though they were just another list in my life; I like to keep it as one of my most respected and sacrosanct secrets, never committed to paper as a tangible list of names or uttered as speech as though ephemeral like spoken word itself. I keep it safe in my mind and rarely consider it, rarely doubt it—it's like a set of intuitive axioms that I never question or need to question. If they are there, they should be; if they are meant to be, they will be, reinforced instinctively from time to time, like when I tell my mother and father that I love them, when I tousle my nephew's hair or adjust the bib on my niece so it rests just so, when I enjoy the most intimate moments with Ellen, when I support my younger brother without question no matter what trouble he's gotten himself into, and so on.

This tendency to value others over myself is something I have always invitingly allowed in my nature. No matter how fierce the impulse to save myself in any given situation, I would willingly override this instinct in preference for these people. The rest of the world I would leave behind.