The last line

Wen Tianxiang was the last effective minister of the Southern Song. The dynasty collapsed and his family was taken, his wife and daughters enslaved, and he was imprisoned for three years.

Kublai Khan himself wanted him to serve. Refusing meant something worth having, so the offers went up. He was promised a senior post. The hostage was his own family. They sent his daughter's letter.

He said that what he could not do was serve two masters, and that he knew the price.

In prison he wrote the *Song of the Righteous Spirit*, a list of historical figures who chose the harder thing, some of them losers. The poem is still read.

He was executed in 1283. Some in his position had become useful officials in the new regime, and their lives were easier and their names are dust.

I don't offer this as advice. Most of us will not be tested at this level, and I have never been in a situation where this choice was mine.

But there's a smaller version of the question that arrives several times a decade: which line won't you cross even when the offers are real? If you've never answered it in writing, then the answer is being written for you by whoever is doing the offering.

That's the only reason to say it out loud in a private file, once. Not for the record. So that you know.

MOJOWAY asks clients that question early, while it's still hypothetical, because hypothetical answers are honest.