Saturday, July 14, 2007

A National Service Hero?

Well, I’m late for this I know, now that this piece of news has already been blown all over blogosphere, and practically all Netizens would have either read of it, or have participated in the publicity through various forms of distribution.

I’m referring to the complaint email sent by PM Lee’s son 2LT Li which resulted in him receiving punishment for his act of justice.

Some may comment he dared to do what he did because of his special family background. But really, let’s put that aside and treat him as just another individual.

What do we see from this action? That a guy has found some injustice in his workplace, and he deemed the responsibility to be on himself to see that the case gets resolved and the party-in-crime gets his due penalty.

In life, there are many times when we have to do what we need to do. But sadly, not all of us do it. Many reasons and many people will come and prevent you from doing what you should.

“Don’t be the hero!” your friend will tell you.

“It won’t help. You are fighting against a whole troop/company/gang” another friend will also tell you.

You look at the facts on hand, and realised that it could be a hard battle you might be facing, and suddenly, you get cold feet.

That is just one of the possible scenarios. Others could be where you are at risk of losing that person’s friendship by revealing the “crime” he did.

Morally, you should uncover the unjust deed. Then, personally, do you have to be the one to do it?

I was meaning to write an article about this, when I read a fellow blogger Narev’s post on his dilemma of whether he should do what he feels right to do, yet is caught in between due to other factors. But I wasn’t able to pen my thoughts as they were clustered.

Now, this event came in time for me to crystallise them and to have this post written.

So my friends, the fact that you are caught in dilemmas only mean that you are faced with choices. Every one of us does have a choice to make. So what we need to do is to weigh out the consequences of making one, and having the courage to go ahead and act upon the choice.

Of course, lots of care and sensitivity has to be taken into consideration if the matter is touchy so that you get the differences ironed out while minimising resulting conflicts or unhappiness.

Even when you have decided to choose one of the alternatives, that itself opens up to few more choices of how you can handle the situation. Communication comes in various forms. Conflicts can be managed in several ways.

Making the first choice tells you what you want to achieve.

Making the second choice tells you how to achieve it.

I hope you are making the right choice, one that is to the best of what you discern to be at the time. And dare to act, and dare to be responsible.