Kobayashi Maru

In Star Trek lore with William Shatner on TV, the Kobayashi Maru was an exercise not in surviving a battle but making an officer deal with situations where there IS no right decision. It is a character building exercise in which everyone in his crew including himself will likely die no matter what decision he or she makes. This trains an officer to not only face his or her own death but also face his or her responsibility in the deaths of all his or her crew mates. Since as a military person this situation could occur in real life as  or just in life in general, this is sometime useful to think about for all of us.

I wanted to write about this because of situations in my own life that I have run into where there are NO good decisions, and which though one may not die there is no useful way to live through these situations and to keep their pride intact. Some people's lives are just so uneventful that they never have to face this. But for me, I have had to meet impossible situations many times so far in my life.

I have gotten to the point where I just consider it God testing me for something greater than I can conceive of presently. This is the only reason I have chosen to stay alive through several of these types of situations in my life.

The first time I was presented with this kind of horror I was only 2 years old and had whooping cough. Though many people think you have to fight for life and breath in whooping cough this likely will result in death in many people that young. I lived only because I allowed myself to pass out when others kept fighting. Later, when I was 50 I got a heart virus and had the same kind of experience where I couldn't oxygenate my blood no matter how fast I breathed so I had to "allow" myself to pass out over and over again without panicking. I was the only one I knew of that year that survived my heart virus because no one else appeared to be able to not panic or didn't know that panicking when they couldn't oxygenate would kill them because of a series of events that take place in the body once one panics with a heart virus.

Another experience like this was created when because I got what I realize now was "Blunt Trauma childhood epilepsy" which is caused by a blow to the head as a child which as the skull grows the pressure on the brain lessens in one's teens and the epilepsy goes away. When I started having seizures around age 10, by age 12 I became very despondent and suicidal. And only by joining my parents religion did I have any hope of surviving this incident psychologically at all.  However, in order to stay alive from 12 to 15 when my seizures stopped I became very very religious. (My experience of seizures was that each seizure was much scarier than being murdered in a horror movie). In other words I was completely terrified and experienced each seizure as being murdered, so this was a trauma bordering on real physical death. Eventually I learned to refuse to feel anything when an aura came over me in reaction. This "Stance of the warrior" I have learned throughout my life to go into whenever intense good or bad things are going on that overwhelm most other people. I think this is one reason why I am such an effective intuitive because I am able to shut my emotions off when necessary to go into battle mode and to stay there until things have settled down whether they are good or bad or neutral in nature.

So, the next Kobayashi Maru I encountered was my Intuitive nature and scientific nature hitting up against the general hypocrisy of my religion around age 21. As a result of this I was asked to leave my childhood religion and my parents were pretty upset about this. My intellectual point of view was, "Well. If they are that hypocritical then I didn't want to be a member of that church anyhow." But my emotional reaction that was completely unexpected by me was, "I just kissed goodbye all my best friends from all over the world in my church." Then it got worse. Since I was shunned by the church in that no one was allowed to speak to me in the church worldwide, all sorts of completely untrue rumors were swirling around my name. But since I couldn't clear my name because all these people were forbidden to talk to me it was like being in hell with lies being spread all over the world about me.

This almost cost me my life from ages 21 to 23 or 24. By age 25 after many many girlfriends one at a time that helped keep me alive I met and married a girl and had a son in 1974 when I was 26. Having a son saved my life. That's the best way I can put it. I stopped rock climbing and taking unnecessary risks so I could stay alive to raise my son right. Soon after my son was born a friend of mine died free climbing Castle Crags near Mt. Shasta in California and another friend pulled a 9 pin zipper as his pitons pulled out one by one. Luckily, two pins remained so it didn't kill the other climber he was tied to as well as him. He was very bruised for quite a while after that experience.

So, many of us face these Kobayashi Marus in our lives in which there is no way to extricate yourself and your pride from these situations. So, I am not a prideful person in the way of many that I know. I see myself as a consummate survivor. I tend to survive things now that would kill or drive insane the next 10 people. So, if you have to choose between your pride and your survival remember the Kobayahshi Maru. Sometimes there are no good choices and you will be lucky to even save your own life. Life is like that. Yes. It is.

I tend to think that God always had plans for me. He likely has plans for you too.