My Two Pence on the W-word

I’m not quite sure how to begin this. Let me first say that I’m an idealistic, 19-year old who is still getting used to the workings of the world. It just so happens that this process is coinciding with great happenings around the world and thus, the whole getting-used-to isn’t going as smoothly as I’d have liked.

At a time such as this, I feel its important for me to sit and articulate my feelings about what is about to happen in a very short time, if for no other reason than to be able to look back one day and read over them. Words such has horrible, terrifying, bad etc. have all come to mean nothing, they’ve all simply been sucked dry of their meanings in the face of the war that is about to occur (probably has occured by now). So I’m basically left with no words. Yet there are so many feelings within me, all of them angling out at different directions, like arrows that have been shot randomly at something.

Politics (in my limited understanding of it) is a cruel, cruel game. I simply can’t fathom how the loss of innocent human life can be justified by any words. I really can’t. Its sickening how we’ve been so desensitized to the extent that people are merely numbers and no longer other human beings just like us. Its sickening how the war, though real, is still at the end of the day a conversation topic, not a reality. Its sickening how the human population has gotten used to the self-created violence in life. Its sickening how we all live in a cocoon of safety, unable to look beyond the shallow horizon ahead of us.

Like I said, I can't swallow how half a million people are scheduled to die in a period of three weeks and we are pathetically powerless to do anything to stop this from happening. I choke.

In the tragedy at the WTC, 4000 innocent people lost their lives out of the blue. Here, we have 500,000 innocent people about to die and everybody knows about it, yet, nothing. Some people out there are probably thinking that I’m being too emotional, I’m taking the war out of the context, I’m not considering the reasons behind this. Well, you know I am being too emotional. I think there’s something just wrong with me, I’m still human. I don’t believe that political actions and the reasoning behind them can be divorced from the consequences of those actions. And even the people who have been desensitized till the end of the road, need to be reminded of this.

The words of a song sung by Creed come to my mind at a time like this.

Higher

When dreaming I’m guided through another world
Time and time again
At sunrise I fight to stay asleep
’Cause I don’t want to leave the comfort of this place
’Cause there’s a hunger, a longing to escape
From the life I live when I’m awake
......

Although I would like our world to change
It helps me to appreciate
Those nights and those dreams
But, my friend, I’d sacrifice all those nights
If I could make the Earth and my dreams the same
The only difference is
To let love replace all our hate

I just feel like this aspect of war sorely needs to be addressed. I think those 500,000 people deserve a memorial. I think they need a minute of silence. I think their lives are worth as bit as mine and yours. I think they need to be remembered.