Private First Class Timothy O’Malley was twenty years young when he died during a training exercises at Fort Hood, TX. In the dark, the driver of Tim’s tank accidentally ran their vehicle off an embankment and into a ravine. The tank flipped, pinning Tim in the loader’s hatch. Crushed under the sixty tons of metal, he died instantly.

Tim, in the course of his short life, had turned the corner on the apparent goods that challenged him as a young man. He came to know the “good” life was not the same as the “life well-lived”. He knew that caring for others is the only real “good” required for the life well lived. This unselfish disposition is not a natural but a learned disposition and Tim had learned the difference.

Wealth, power, and all other goods of chance are now beyond Tim and, indeed, beyond many of us still living. These objects are not ours for the choosing. It seemed to me that the good life must reside only in what we choose to pursue and not in what chance may provide. The standard of the life well lived consists, then, in choosing correctly. In his short life, Tim learned to choose correctly.