Aspirants to the U.S. Army Special Forces, I’m told, are first run through a selection course – a “weed-out” course to filter out those least likely to succeed in the much longer and undoubtedly much more expensive (from an Army investment perspective) qualification course and follow-on specialty training.

Part of that selection course, I’m told, are certain tasks that may appear ill-defined or open-ended. What does this mean? The Army is very good and very methodical in its training and testing. The objectives and the pass/fail critera are explicitly stated. The road march is for this many miles; you will carry this much weight and you must finish in under this time. But what you didn’t know how long or how far? What if you weren’t given a cut-off time for passing or failing, but you heard that it was possible to fail for taking too long? Suddenly there is a challenging, new mental component. Do your best; we’ll see if it’s good enough.

I never went through the course. I was an aspirant of sorts, but it wasn’t in the cards: I injured my back, and life went off in an orthogonal direction. I never really had to face that challenge.

Except that I did. We all do. Every day. I mean, do you know how many days you have left on earth? If you had a mission, a meaning, or a purpose, did you meet the objectives? Are you being judged? By whom? How do you know if you’ve passed?

Everyday, the Kobayashi Maru… Maybe “winning” is not even knowing. And maybe like the selection course, everyone who “fails” should at least be able to save face, to convince themselves that it was for the better, to be glad their path turned in a different direction.

Who knows?