What is it to save someone’s life? It depends on who’s life, does it not? To save an old man’s life is to prolong the miserable pain of youth wasted. To save a young man’s life is to doom him to heartache and loss. Not only these things, of course. An equation could be made to ratify the balance of good and bad. But certainly these things. To spare a killer, to condemn a saint. Should the effect of their lives be measured in equal proportion, they serve the same ends. To save a life is a complicated affair, to say nothing of the savior. And so it seems; we save others at the risk of others yet. Why do we hold this in such high regard? Why not exalt the unobtrusive observer as hero of allowing nature to transpire. “Here lies Joe. He really saw it all go down.” Even the newscaster …no, damn the newscaster. Damn all mouthpieces. First hand accounts, especially when never shared with another soul; those are true treasures. The man who possesses his wife’s first morning glance for a thousand days; the cowboy who’s stolen himself all the sunsets in Texas; the mother’s first look into her daughters eyes to share that love and fear and hope and sadness for the Great curse. And here we arrive again at that crux, seemingly with the evidence for the saving: the secret experiences of life. Perhaps these are worth saving every damned one of us; for killers and Saints both keep secrets.