The helplessness of witnessing a war. I sit at my desk, clocking in my 9 to 5, while on the same Earth, a few thousand kilometres away perturbed people - women, children, elderly, men, pets, families, sick, vulnerable - scramble crossing precarious war ridden terrain, to hopefully to cross international borders into adjacent safer pastures. They move leaving everything behind - a beautiful, comfortable life, warm hard earned homes, a safe job, a welcoming society, into remote lands with alien languages and customs but open charitable arms. Others, voluntarily or otherwise, move in the other direction, to fight amateurly, to hold fort, to safeguard the threatened identity of their country, their customs, ideas, beliefs, traditions, languages and the homogenous sense of society that results from these.
And here, I sit on my plush comfortable chair, safe, worrying about business timelines, meaningless in relativity, simultaneously browsing subconsciously about day 24 of the war. I have beautiful friends, with whom I planned to travel to their homeland, from both sides of the war, who I now see, distantly, in desolation, anxious, lost in anticipation of safe news of those back home who either on one side cramp inside ironically vulnerable bunkers, living on rationed supplies and stale bread, and on the other side sit severely crippled by sanctions, weapons of economic warfare as corporations pull out of their economy under the harsh scrutiny of the spectating world fed by unrelenting coverage of human suffering by audience hungry media houses and their brave journalists. All of these friends and acquaintances, and the near complete majority of those affected keep no animosity with the other side, and seek no war, but find themselves unfortunately and incorrectly as expendable collateral in a war waged by the constricted deluded egos of a very select few who command the reigns of the now muddled and twisted form of modern democracy.
In helplessness, I fail to find words, of encouragement, support or consolation, as I find myself unable to take sides in this vanity, and I don’t know how to succinctly help, to make this all go away, to give them back life as they knew it, to go back in time to the beautiful days just a few months and weeks ago, as life elsewhere conducts itself normally, people dine in restaurants, holidays start as spring approaches, beaches fill up, festivals bloom, economies boom and bust, factories keep churning produce, corporations thrive and expand, and yet the dread of war encroaches the back of our minds, of all us witnesses, as if a pit has permanently manifested itself in the stomach of our collective being in anxious trepidation. And this helplessness is not limited to a particular war, but spans all conflicts that flare across the globe, even in these seemingly learned times, continually, in a man manifested never ending and yet futile pursuit of materialistic nothings.
And yet, in spite of all this despair, In a world where change is the only constant, hope resiliently lingers in the shadows, as charities, and individual pursuits spring to help, to rebuild, to extend a helping hand, in ways minute, but needed, shining bright the collective goodness of all beings, in a time where the uselessness of war, and the pursuit and instinctive want of synchronous harmony hangs heavy in the collective subjective conscience of humankind. I realise it is impossible for everyone to participate, as we watch helplessly from the distant sidelines, but only hope we can all learn, and move to a world where peace is the universal norm, and war a disease eradicated.
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