REFLECTION 03 · Responsibility & surrender
Selflessness
Two losses, separated by thirty-six years
“For the losses of others, he took responsibility; for his own loss, he entrusted the pain to faith.”
In 1995, President Nelson lost his daughter Emily to cancer and bowed his head: ‘Not my will, but thine, be done.’ Decades earlier, as a young heart surgeon, he had lost two little girls during operations their parents had begged him to attempt.
He could reasonably have forgiven himself, yet after the second operation he wept until morning and returned to the laboratory to learn, improve, and try again.
Placed together, the stories reveal a subtle moral asymmetry. When a life entrusted to him was lost, he accepted responsibility. When the loss was his own, he did not blame others; he surrendered what he could not change to faith.
PAUSE & REFLECT
01How can responsibility and surrender coexist?
02Why might selflessness require different responses to our own loss and another’s?
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