angelsword

People often call me lucky. Yes, there's the obvious things people see; "You're paid to be sick," "You don't have to work," "The government's paying for you to go back to school." But a lot of my friends (especially the ones in the military) say that I'm lucky because I didn't have to go overseas. Some even say it's more than fortune, considering that there was a notice on my desk about preparing for an upcoming deployment.

As many people know, not being deployed is a sort of thorn in my side, what with the whole, "not doing my job and keeping my word," thing.

But something hit me this morning. What if I had gone over? What if combat broke out while I was there? What if I had to do my duty? What if I had pulled the trigger?

The words are simple enough. Even the machinations of what goes on during and afterwards are simple, technically speaking. I pull the trigger back, which causes a small hammer to lurch forward and strike the bottom of the bullet casing, emitting a spark, which ignites the gunpowder, propelling the head of the bullet forward down the barrel of the weapon, and further into the target.

I can describe the theory of it all day long. But at the end of the day, I'm content with the knowledge that I didn't ever have to put theory into practice, and never had to find out if I am capable of ending human life.

Thus my conundrum. What sort of world would this be for me, if I knew I was able to kill? What kind of man would I be?