"This and other hard-earned lessons left you with a relatively effective life philosophy which helped both you and Karl throughout your college careers. Karl, if you recall, was quite a rebel. He was constantly fighting, "... the ridiculous nature of most school subjects," or "... that monumental madness called the Vietnam War." You were the calming influence, reminding him that what is wrong for one person may be totally right for another. And that each person can only learn when he is ready to learn. Your position that professors are just the victims of their own psychological needs and their own limiting belief systems never fitted quite right with Karl. He always felt it was the students who are the victims."

"After your degrees in philosophy and psychology, respectively, you and Karl were drafted and within a very few months landed in Vietnam. There you served together until that final patrol where your platoon was destroyed. Karl used the one eye he had left to find his way back through miles of jungle with you, on his back, unconscious, and minus your right leg."

"Karl was as bitter about your injury as he was about his own, perhaps more so. You, on the other hand, felt that this was your karma and that, sad as it might be, it was necessary for your growth during that lifetime.

"While you, too, felt that the Vietnam War was a mistake from the start, you had by that time accepted a philosophy which held that truth is subjective and that whatever a person believes is true, is true for him. This, you felt, required you to – respect the right of each individual to believe whatever he wanted to. You could not condemn him for acting on that belief even though you disagreed with it.

"It was this very philosophy that led you to sacrifice your own leg rather than destroy another person.