‘I would rather die.’
Most of us find it hard to turn down invitations – especially those for which we have no valid excuses and for which honesty would not be especially helpful in maintaining relationships.
But how many of us haven’t, at least once, wanted to tell somebody how glad we are to decline their invitation – but politeness held us back from telling the truth?
Who wouldn’t, just once, love to decline an invitation like the playwright Harold Pinter did in a 2001 letter to his friend Sir Tom Stoppard?
Dear Tom,
Thank you for your invitation to host a fundraising dinner in the private room of a top London restaurant.
I would rather die.
All the best,
Yours,
Harold Pinter
https://www.thepoke.com/2019/09/20/harold-pinter-declining-an-invite-from-tom-stoppard-is-the-best-4-word-takedown-youll-read-this-week/
No subterfuge. No excuse. No room for doubt.
Priceless.
But, instead, how many of us fumble for justification? A prior engagement? A familial commitment? ‘I’d love to, but…’
If only we were brave enough.
Funny. Not funny.
When I first heard in 2019 that Ukraine’s new president was a former comedian who had played the part of the president of Ukraine in a popular political satire television show, I laughed.
Life imitating comedy. Funny!
But what unfolded in Ukraine three years later was anything but funny.
And now, after another three years, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has become – no argument – a leader amongst world leaders.
And it all started with an invitation. One that was emphatically declined:
“The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.” @ZelenskyyUa on the US evacuation offer.
Embassy of Ukraine to the UK, X, Feb 26, 2022
‘I would rather die.’ Seriously.
Several years ago, I came across this 1975 letter by Sirik Matak, a former minister in the Cambodian government. The U.S. had sent the Cambodian leaders an offer of evacuation from Phnom Penh so they could escape the advancing Khmer Rouge.
Sirik Matak’s letter is addressed to the U.S. Ambassador John Gunther Dean. The depth of his feeling is no less visceral for its being clothed in elegant diplomatic language – and it must have delivered a gut punch to Dean as he read it.
For a long time after reading it, I left the page open as a tab on my screen, returning occasionally to reread it, not wanting to delete it, but also not quite knowing what to do with it.
Now I do. Perhaps you, too, will be affected as deeply as I was when you read it.
Dear Excellency and Friend,
I thank you for your letter and for your offer to transport me towards freedom. I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion. As for you, and in particular for your great country, I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty. You have refused us your protection, and we can do nothing about it.
You leave, and my wish is that you and your country will find happiness under this sky. But mark it well, that if I should die here on this spot and in my country that I love, no matter, because we are all born and must die. I have only committed this mistake of believing in you.
Please accept, Excellency and dear friend, my faithful and friendly sentiments.
Sirik Matak
Nguyen Anh Tuan, America Coming to Terms: The Vietnam Legacy, Xlibris Corporation, p. 480.
Phnom Penh fell in April 1975.
Sirik Matak was shot in the stomach and left to die from his wound. It took three days.
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