I will never forget sitting with my Dad watching the morning news on our annual ski trip when word broke that Saddam Hussein had been found in a fox hole. My Dad, the thinking man that he is, posed a question to me that made me have a profound realization about how I feel about a number of heavy topics: “If you found yourself there, the only person to encounter Saddam Hussein, and you had a gun and the chance to do to him what he had done to countless others, would you shoot him?”

I’m not going to say what my answer was, because that’s not the point of the post, but I was reminded of that question when I read this post by Heather Armstrong a couple of days ago, posing her own hypothetical question: “Let’s say you’re given the opportunity to donate some money to a desperate family who would use it to feed their children, but were only able to do so if you donated the same amount of money to someone you knew would use it to buy crack. Would you do it?”

Take a few minutes to chew on either or both of those questions. Does that tell you something about yourself?

If you’re curious as to why Heather was asking, she explains and I think everyone should read, not because I’m trying to teach a lesson in humanitarianism but because I think it’s a beautifully written post demonstrating how something so simple can affect someone so profoundly.

(Cheers to Dooce)