There was this story. A Harvard University professor asked for a volunteer from a class and told her, in this case, to list the ten most important people in her life. The professor would then ask: If one of them is going to die, which one would you prefer? So student cross-out one after another. By the time only parents, children, and spouse are left, the choice became extremely hard. When it got down to the last one, the student chose her husband to be alive and ran out of the room in tears.

The moral, or whatever you want to call it, argued here is that even as close as parents and children are to us, in comparison to the spouse, they come up short. We did not and could not choose our parents, nor could our children choose us. The spouse is the only one that is bonded to us by mutual freewill. Which is also the most honored human relationship by most cultures around the world. Given the indepth exploration and explanation of the choice, an excellent job at that if I may say so, I still believe that she had made the wrong choice.

First of all, no situation was given. How were these 9 other people dying? Was there an executioner standing by to kill them one by one? If that’s the case, why not try to kill the executioner and save everyone? If it’s the case of natural disaster, it is not something you can choose to happen or not. If it’s an accident which you were present, precautions can be taken to avoid such circumstances. There should be no situation where you should be in place to choose which person lives and which person perishes like this. Therefore the correct answer should be “I choose not to choose.”

Secondly, if it’s just hypothetically speaking, then it supposedly not matter which one you should choose, then the answer is easily, “whichever.”

I believe this was a trick question, where the answer is not given, where the answer has to be discovered through reasoning and cognitive thoughts. In this world, many times we are faced with choices, but we must not forget that the choices presented to us may not always be the best choice. There may be better answers, better solutions out there that do not casually present themselves to us. These solutions require freeing the limit of common sense, thoroughly searching, and break all bonds of the mind.