Choose your battles

He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.

Sun Tzu

In the late summer of 1941 after a resounding rout of large swathes of Northern European the mighty Hitler made a world changing decision.

He had proudly stated of Russia that, “if you kicked in the door, the whole rotten structure would collapse.” That, it seemed, was going to be the pattern, sweeping across the country largely unopposed they paused at the door of Moscow awaiting the Fuhrer’s orders to crush it.

Inexplicably Hitler decided not to, he favoured conquering Leningrad in the North in an attempt to strike at the ideological heart rather than the political heart. This one decision cost him Russia, the soldiers of the Russian army heard Stalin call for action and fought back. The turning of the weather and the harshness of a winter broke the German spirit.

He was not the first or last general to lose a battle because of one decision, pride and war are not good bedfellows.

Mercifully, few of us will ever be in such a situation that demands such far reaching decision making. That said, every one of us will be faced with decisions that can have life long ripples if we are not careful in the moment of choice.

As a person who is always a pacifist first, the option of physical violence is never really on the table. When it comes to engaging in verbal sparring however, I am not quite as reserved. There is within our family Dna a real justice gene. Seeing an injustice sparks in each one of us and real indignation and desire to get involved.

Watching the story of the ‘Selma’ march last weekend assured me that there are many who see such issues, and given the opportunity and leadership will rally to a cause.

In the past this has been a great driving force to extract from local government the things that are due to people.  It has been the motivational factor in seeing projects established and lives eased. But in this part of our lives it has no particular focus, the self preservation aspect involved in recovery from illness has put up a necessary barrier.

Where I work is a fairly militant environment, when you put 600 men in one place and give them too much time to think, the smallest of issues become huge.

Yesterday there was a meeting to discuss something that had arisen, it wasn’t a particularly bad thing but it was compounded by family allegiances. Having weighed all of the options in my own mind the decision was made to avoid the thing altogether.

I have put myself squarely in the middle of such gatherings at other times and spoken out without hesitation. This time the issue was so emotional and cloudy that I decided my brain did not require that level of turmoil. Waking from my 30 minute nap to the arguments and ongoing discussions confirmed that I had made the correct decision.

Not every decision we will be faced with has external consequences. Sometimes just having the wisdom to extract ourselves or simply to say nothing is enough. Enough to preserve our own peace in the day to day and to reserve our energies for things that we should actually fight for.

Because if we are honest, the fight for our own peace is one of the most difficult!