Look me in the eye and tell me if I really should die. You know you don’t want to kill me. You can use your executioner’s work to write a story about the empathy you feel in those moments, when you read it in a few years you’re sure to be surprised, I guess you know what empathy is. Yes, you certainly do. Try to put yourself in my shoes and try to imagine how a person is about to die.
Come on, look at yourself, think I can be your brother, that you could be me. Answer: what justifies my death? You point the barrel at a gun that’s not even yours in my direction. They told you to kill me and you don’t think twice. Or is that what it looks like? But I know what you’re thinking. You don’t want to kill me, you don’t want to end my life.
- We may be different.
- But you know that’s not reason enough to execute me.
- My body will end up on the floor spitting out a trail of blood while you’re going to have dinner with your family.
- You’ll know you killed an innocent man and you can still eat.
- But I know you’re suffering inside.
In your empathy story you can talk about Robert Vischer, you know who he is?He was a 19th-century German philosopher who first used the concept of empathy, although the German word he used translated as “inner feeling. “Interesting, isn’t it?
I have no choice but you. You can let me go and no one will know, I’ll go away with my family, beyond those borders, tell me, what do you gain from my death?What do you got to shoot me in the head? Nothing, you get nothing. You may think he’s a good soldier, but after all he’s going to kill me.
I would like to think that if the order were to be thrown into hell you would not obey him, I am trying to think that your judgment can guide your actions, that there is a possibility, more or less distant, that you follow this thought that you have come to think alone.
What did he tell you about me?What do you know about my life? I’ll give you information when you write your story about empathy. You know I have a five-year-old daughter and a son of three?That they’re beautiful. My daughter Luisa always gets up in bed in the morning and wakes me up with her hair loose. He tells me Daddy sleeps a lot. My son Marco laughs a lot with his sister. And now you’re going to leave them without a father. I’ll never see my kids again.
Tell me, please, do you think they deserve it? A father you don’t know. He has been told to take this father out of the way, because he has his own ideals, his own political ideology. You’re one of mine. Maybe not in relation to politics, but humanely. I can see it in your eyes. Your eyes can’t help communication: they haven’t left you completely blind. Your tense face shows that you obey only to survive.
“My small, tender and wandering soul, guest and companion of my body, will descend to these pale, rigid and naked places, where I will have to give up the games of the past. ” – Emperor Hadrian-
Why are you putting me behind a tree?Are you ashamed of what you’re going to do? Don’t hide my death. Don’t hide your murder, you’ve been told to kill me, that’s how the country works now, wherever you can see us, I want you to see how you end my life, to see your face when they shoot me, let me see you when my heart can’t beat, don’t hide what you’re going to do. No, don’t do that, don’t hide the controls.
I know you are listening. Of course you are listening to me. In your future story of empathy, I know you will write that you have listened to all of us. It is unavoidable. You are brave in front of your superiors, but you are afraid of death, the only thing that consoles you is that the idea does not come from you.
You believe that you obey only one order, that your responsibility for this action is minimal, I would like you to answer me and tell me if it is really canceled, if you really believe it, because it is not your idea, the responsibility that corresponds to you disappears. If they told you to kill your son, would you?You’re the one who’d kill him, not the ones who told you to.
When you write your story about empathy, make it clear that you’re the one pulling the trigger and you can’t shoot because no one’s watching, just you and me. You have options. You’re part of a system that made you believe that people like me should die, but you don’t think so, do you?I know you don’t. You’re definitely a good family man. Tonight, kiss your kids when you get home. Do what I can’t do.
The night is about to fall and you hold me from the tree. The sun goes down, looking for the horizon. I could run, but I know I’d end my chances of survival. In the end, we came to accept our destiny. The question is whether it really was my destiny. How many did you kill before me?
You know, I don’t blame you, I don’t hold a grudge. Maybe I’d do the same for you, or maybe I wouldn’t. Don’t think I’m contigo. no angry about anything else. All I want is peace, my children, my wife, my parents?I hope you’re all right. I’m going to miss you guys. At least you could tell them I remembered them before, say, I left. I hope that one day you will write your history of empathy, showing how you have felt but are not allowed to express.
I think the time has come. You carry the gun and point it at me, there’s still time. I’m still alive. You don’t want to kill me, and you know it. Are you really going to be able to sleep at night knowing that you killed an innocent man? Can you see your children proud of what? what have you done You know you don’t want to kill me. You could have done it already, but not yet?
“When the pure forms flowed under the cry of the daisies, I realized that I had been killed. ” – Federico García Lorca-