Comment/Answer

Someone wrote a comment to my last post, which I'll quote here and respond to:

Anonymous said:
'Your attempt to justify that anybody can leave a pregnant wife/ girlfriend doesn’t really ring the right way… If you want to make a point about regretting / not regretting, why use this example? And why make up a fictional story?'

Maybe it's just me, but I sense a slightly hostile tone in that comment. Nevertheless, I'm happy that someone took the time to read and comment. I'll expand my first post with this answer, to honor the disagreement. Maybe I'm over-sensitive (I know I am), and maybe it's me confusing curiosity with hostility - maybe also due to the perfectly legal anonymity of the commenter. I find the level of hostility/provoked tone interesting because my instant thought is, Why does this provoke you so much? I suppose I have to take responsibility for the fact, that I do write both to please and provoke, and I managed to provoke you with this one. Let me try to explain some motivation of mine behind the text's layers of provoking content:

Dear Commenter.

Last thing first: Why make up a fictional story, you ask. Well, first answer is; I do make up fictional stories. It's what I do. I write fiction. Second answer is; this is a blog, not a diary. I sense the idea behind your question, that it would be better if I used an example from my own life to reflect about regrets over. This is a very personal blog, but I always try to write it in a not too private way, so that I can live my life and meet people reading my blog without them knowing emabarrasingly and uncomfortably too much about me. I could easily've used an example from real life, mine or someone close to me, but who came to my mind was Jacob from the story. Had I been more personal than quoting a piece of my fiction, my life would be different today. I would probably feel a little more naked in this world, having shared too much in this forum - and I just might regret that.

Why use this as an example about regretting? There are many other more innocent things, that I could've written about. But I find it interesting when there's also a moral aspect to the personal regretting/not regretting, and I guess I wanted to include that in the story. I'll get personal now, and give you a couple of examples. I know two women, who both left their husbands after the husbands had suffered one a stroke, the other a brain bleeding. Are you allowed to do that? I know several couples, who broke up during pregnancies. I know a man, who left his girlfriend after four years, only a few weeks after her mother died. I know someone who left her husband while he had cancer. I know a lot, a lot, a lot of people, who abandonned their small children by divorcing their spouse. In other words, I know a lot of good people, who've done bad things.

So, of course I basically wish to compromise your idea of good and bad deeds. Would Jacob have been a bad person, had he left? Is he now a good person? A better person? Is your first or your final responsibility to yourself and creating the life you wish to live? Is it responsible to hold on to a promise or an intention no matter what? Even if the cost is your own longterm happiness? Will that sacrifice ever truly make someone else happy?

I know a lot of situations, where people have had extremely hard times justifying their own choices. Like the abovementioned. These people were crying, suffering, telling themselves over and over, that they couldn't stay out of pity. That they couldn't live their lives for another person. That confronted with the development of life - someones falls ill, you fall in love in the most inappropriate direction, someone dies, you change desires in life profoundly, you fall out of love - what do you do? Is there maybe both a common and an individual right thing to do? Which one do you chose? And who does that make you?

'Your attempt to justify that anybody can leave a pregnant wife/ girlfriend ..', you wrote. I sense, that you don't find it ever justifiable to leave a pregnant wife/girlfriend? And that I find very interesting. I chose Jacob to have been in that dilemma because it's a ground sin to abandon a pregnant woman. Not too long ago, any decent man with integrity married the woman he'd impregnated. No question. Anything else was escaping responsibility. But this is the modern world. New rules. People leave each other all the time. We're just stuck in the idea, that a woman is a man's responsibility. Would it have provoked you as much, had it been a female character leaving her husband?

This of course leads to the gender aspect. It's not a coincidence that the story is about a man, thinking about leaving his wife rather than the other way around. I did that because it's so much worse in our common idea of right and wrong. It pushes the buttons about women being poor and vulnerable and men being strong and selfish. Is it still so in this modern world? Somehow, I don't think it is, but I think our idea still is that it is. Of course, a pregnant woman is in a vulnerable situation. But a man being left by his pregnant wife, isn't he in a vulnerable situation? Still, I don't think he'd get the sympathy as instantly as a woman would. We'd assume, he probably somehow made her leave him, made it necessary and maybe even wise for her to leave him. His will or behaviour is determining, not hers. He's not as poor, oh, the woman (with child) is leaving him. As she is poor when it's him leaving her (with child). The mother-child-responsibility symbiosis is manifested, and the independent-self-man as well. Only - the modern world also offers selfish women and child-loving men. How annoying is that to our basic good-bad assumptions.

All these people leaving or abandoning other people; people they love or have loved, people in need, people more or less literally lying down. I think these are some of the hardest choices, I've witnesses more or less closely. You don't leave someone in a situation like that because you're evil. You do it because you feel you have to. Because you (finally) take responsibility for yourself. Even if it's at the cost of someone else, someone vulnerable, ill, pregnant, your own children. That's what I want to ask you, did Jacob take responsibility for his own life?

I know a lot who've done it, deserted, fled, escaped, left. Through pain and personal crisises and the hardest doubts about their right to do such a thing. Always with big costs. The gain? They knew they were doing the right thing, their right thing, a right thing.

None of them have ever regretted leaving.