It's hard to know what to say about today, but I do feel the need to say something about recommitting to finding ways to make peace through peace.
A lot of people are excited about bin laden's death; after 9/11 how can we as a nation not feel the need to celebrate any amount of closure that we are able to make corporeal? How can we not want to put quantifiable milestone markers on the road to ending the cycle of war that we are now in? How can we not feel relief?
But before instinctively starting to rally and celebrate, I think it's vitally important for us to remember that frenzied excitement over "getting the bad guy" is where all extremism comes from.
All extremism.
We have a responsibility to inspect our relief at bin laden's death and also to honor the people who work tirelessly to keep us feeling safe; but we also have a responsibility to work toward making our future world a place free from insidiously hateful and violent conflicts; against us and against others. Killing is never a good option. Never.
War can't remain the default option for so many of the situations that we as a nation find unsolvable or threatening. We are a nation of genius. We have great tools in our hands to avert violent conflict and we need to develop them because not using these tools is hurting us.
Ask anyone who has killed another human being if it didn't inextricably change them or do damage to their spirit. It did. And these people who fight to keep us safe deserve better from our national and individual goals than to be relied upon to keep damaging themselves because we are too disorganized or too impulsive or too lazy to commit to figuring out better ways to make safety and peace happen.
It's so important for us to remember that we want to be more steady and more stalwart in our pursuit of truth and beauty than what we now are--that we want to be more honorable and more compassionate than whatever or whomever threatens us while we are in these pursuits. Look at any kid and say you want differently for them.
So perhaps in lieu of a celebration over this one admittedly relieving and also admittedly temporary 'win,' we can use this time to thoughtfully recommit to work TIRELESSLY toward making a world where we honor our protectors, peers, and selves by developing our capabilities/capacities to find lasting justice through nonviolent actions. let's recommit to teaching ourselves and all the kids in our lives community, love of difference, and communication because what we keep finding out in moments like this one is that we'd like ourselves and every kid we love to be able to be safe without having to compromise anyone else's safety.
No war in our future.
-- sea-oh mcconville
4 comments:
Please thank your friend for sharing this amazing...I don't even know what to describe it as. The way things should be. And thank you Nathania for sharing it so that people like me and others can learn that we are not alone in our thinking processes. Reading this made me cry because it covers so much of how I feel, and I often feel isolated in these thoughts. Thank you again, Nathania, and please thank your friend.
Do you think that the author would be willing to share this anonymously with our local VA newsletter?
ghost - i am so glad to hear that you, you of all people who have paid such a price for our country, would feel a voice given to your own thoughts. and maybe, on an even greater scale, to help you realize you are not alone in them. ever. there are many others who feel and think as you do, even if you don't see them before you on a daily basis. and in whatever way, i am glad to help reflect that as i can. i will pass on your gratitude to the writer, as well as your request. peace, friend.
To ghost:
Nathania, true to her word, did pass your comments on to me.
I would be happy to contribute anonymously or non-anonymously to any such endeavor. I wrote and meant every word. I'm sorry to hear that you have had an isolating experience in this thinking. You certainly aren't alone in feeling alone.
I was nervous about writing and posting that bit. For me, it's hard to know how to talk about personal commitments to making peace...
-Perhaps because society is often reactionarily cynical when faced with the ideals of integrity we desire from ourselves, but feel helpless to make headway toward. It is hard not to want to shout to be the loudest - to scare the vulnerabilities and frustrations away (maybe our hopes along with them!) - but instead to talk softly enough not scare away those moments when our fears and hopes surface and we have a chance to look honestly at them, and what the require from us.
-Perhaps because the peace movement in this country often discounts that US citizens have the luxury of so many freedoms and slices of peace (including being able to be anti-violence, anti-war, and anti-military) at the cost of a history of people's lives and well-being. How do we honor and heal these things to make the peace we crave? Ideals are tricky this way.
-Perhaps even because it is tiring to talk about something that requires so much work, when we are all already so tired. It seems sometimes (and all know it is a false seeming) that it would be easier to try to do peaceful work alone rather than argue about how to make peace happen together. Finding and making community, is therefore triply important.
Regardless of this rambling, thank you for your comment. Thank you for your service. It's my wish that you make peace with yourself and in this world and share that with others.
Best,
Sea-oh
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