This appeared first on LinkedIn.
Mirror, mirror…
The only tribute you can pay a dead soldier is to live your life in a way that is worth defending, and maybe even dying for. All else is virtue signalling at the cost of a tricolour-wrapped corpse in uniform.
Tonight, look into the mirror and ask yourself this: Is what you see reflected back at you worth defending? Worth killing for? Worth dying for? If not, make that change.
And when you do, you don’t need to tell anyone that. You don’t need to announce it on social media. You don’t need to make a spectacle of it. You don’t need a pat on the back for becoming a better human and a better citizen of this nation. You don’t deserve a medal for making sure that the soldier who represents you did not rush headlong onto his death without a thought for nothing. You don’t deserve a mention in dispatches for living a life that deserves that sacrifice. And you surely don’t need to remind anyone of the soldier dying on the border to advance your petty agenda. That soldier is not your cannon fodder. He is not a talking point. He is not a sound bite. He is not a punch line. He is not a vote-catching device. He is not a crutch for your political or material ambitions. And he is not doing you a favour by doing his job. Just like you won’t be doing him one by living a life worthy of the supreme sacrifice.
I am not proposing you change your life just for that soldier you have never met but who is prepared to die for people he has never met. I am proposing that you live your life that it is worth someone, whether a soldier, a friend, a loved one, a sibling, a lover, a compatriot, a fellow citizen, considering worth enduring pain for.
Think about it as you look into the mirror while brushing your teeth at bedtime tonight, and ask yourself whether your conduct during the day passed this simple test: Is your life worth someone else dying for it?
