CHOOSING WISELY

It is always interesting when a story is retold... the lessons repeated... often stories of good and evil... stories with great moral dilemmas... wise truth presented.

Never will I forget the 1982 drama, “Sophie’s Choice,” starring the Academy Award winning Meryl Streep. Streep portrays Sophie Zawistowski, a beautiful Polish immigrant from the post-World War II era, fragilely displaying the remnants of serial number “111379” tattooed into her forearm. In a story of love, tragedy, and attention-attracting triangles, Streep’s character reveals a history of tremendous heartache, walking through the perils of Auschwitz, tormented by having to choose which of her two children will live... and which one will die.

At the movie’s climax, Sophie pleads, "Don't make me choose. I can't choose!" Horrifically, the Nazi soldiers share no sympathy. Without the articulation of her choice, the soldier seizes both. Hence, Sophie screams, "Take my little girl!" Her moment of harrowing decision shapes the rest of her life, concluding she is an unfit and cruel mother, as at the last moment, she actually chose between her children.

The story’s origin lies in a 2000 year old dialogue between two prostitutes and their king...

The one woman said, "My master, this woman and I live in the same house. While we were living together, I had a baby. Three days after I gave birth, this woman also had a baby. We were alone—there wasn't anyone else in the house except for the two of us. The infant son of this woman died one night when she rolled over on him in her sleep. She got up in the middle of the night and took my son—I was sound asleep, mind you!—and put him at her breast and put her dead son at my breast. When I got up in the morning to nurse my son, here was this dead baby! But when I looked at him in the morning light, I saw immediately that he wasn't my baby."
 
"Not so!" said the other woman. "The living one's mine; the dead one's yours."
   
The first woman countered, "No! Your son's the dead one; mine's the living one." They went back and forth this way in front of the king.

The king said, "What are we to do? This woman says, 'The living son is mine and the dead one is yours,' and this woman says, 'No, the dead one's yours and the living one's mine.'" After a moment the king said, "Bring me a sword." They brought the sword to the king. Then he said, "Cut the living baby in two—give half to one and half to the other."

The real mother of the living baby was overcome with emotion for her son and said, "Oh no, master! Give her the whole baby alive; don't kill him!" But the other one said, "If I can't have him, you can't have him—cut away!"

The king gave his decision: "Give the living baby to the first woman. Nobody is going to kill this baby. She is the real mother."

Wisdom to ponder for the day... recognizing we are always in need of wisdom...

AR