How many discharges to rock a solar-powered hula dancer does a capacitor have before its intended useful life has been depleted? How many heartbeats do you have left?

Let us imagine.

Let us put ourselves in the boots of a young, not fully-hardened, 21-year old military leader.

Further, let us put him in charge of French peacekeeper troops, part of KFOR, guarding a bridge over the Ibar River in Kosovska Mitrovica.

Racial tensions are hard to erase but familiarity with those whom you have been brainwashed to call the enemy can open one’s eyes to the fact that we are usually about the same.

In normal, peaceful military exercises, conflicting orders challenge many a field officer’s goals and objectives, often involving politics outside the officer’s circle of influence.

You needn’t stretch your imagination to comprehend the conflicts that crop up in the fog of war, when spot decisions while you and your troops in the line of fire are made under duress as you interpret the implied meaning of the only two orders you’ve received that directly contradict each other.

For instance, one order tells you to protect and defend your troops by maintaining peace while guarding a bridge that acts as a de facto border between two ethnic groups. The second order tells you to protect and defend the civilians against violence in your peacekeeping jurisdiction while maintaining peace and guarding the bridge.

The bridge itself is a nonpeaceful symbol to the locals — one group wants to prevent another group from using or crossing the bridge.

Let’s say two of your troops are injured — could be by rocks/bricks or by a sniper’s bullets, doesn’t matter because you simply know it violates your first order, which motivates you to take action.

Unfortunately, the action you initiate violates the second order because protecting and defending your troops from further injury requires attacking the civilians, many of them armed with rocks, bricks and in a few cases, armaments.

What if you had to order your troops to open fire on a sniper in a civilian’s business/residence?

How do you keep the peace when you’re required to protect everyone in your jurisdiction, including ethnic groups willing to die killing each other to regain old territory, causing chaos through roadblocks and random violence, your troops stuck in the middle by international/NATO/KFOR decree?

Ultimately, politics prevail.

Your orders are always going to conflict at some point in your career, military or private.

However, fail the newspaper test, especially on a world scale, and someone in the chain of command wants heads to roll, even if guillotines are no longer legal or effective.

Enter the court-martial.

Integrity is a curious behavioral trait.

If, in the course of your duties, you have acted not only to the best of your abilities but also followed the best course of actions based on limited information in the fog of war, have you not provided an unassailable defense of your character?

Unfortunately, life is not always about the fairness of your highest ethical actions, let alone your thoughts.

Fortunately, politics and the court of public opinion do not always prevail.

Years pass after you were found not guilty at the court-martial.

Life goes on, your military career having moved into noncombat situations, another civil military servant performing the duties that keep your government’s military units technologically proficient and up-to-date.

One small issue, though. You have to live with the decision you made that led to an mentally excruciating court-martial.

The casualties, the maiming and mental injuries that pile up during wartime can be justified for moral purposes.

What about the same during a peacekeeping mission?

And what if your morals and ethics are based on the viewpoint of a Bright — a humanist, naturalist or existentialist atheist?

In other words, as a Frenchman marching down a path heavily trodden by Sartre, should you concern yourself at all about your previous momentary selves that exist only in the perpetual fantasy of a storyline you keep repeating because you imagine that time exists because people want to know who you are and where you came from?

Do you develop complex computer algorithms based on the previous work of others or can you create genius out of nothingness?

History, as the saying goes, is a fable agreed upon, subject to interpretation as to tragedy, travesty or triumph.

Some races and ethnic groups will perpetuate their subcultural superiourity to the detriment of others, fully entrenched to protect their historic fables against outside influences.

If you are ordered to put yourself in harm’s way between two strongly opposed racial/ethnic groups, don’t expect to find an easy-to-obtain win-win situation.

The fallacy of history and politics may have been set up to trip you at every step.

All you can do is get back up, on your feet if you can, in a wheelchair if you have to, don’t look back and set your sights on your personally-satisfying longterm goals, influenced by a long line of momentary selves, temporary confluences of states of energy that constitute what you’ve been trained to see as self and others.

The universe is benign. The set of states of energy that imagines itself as you has a limited lifetime.

Take comfort in your impermanence.