War. We don't think about it. We don't understand it. The government decrees it and then we send people off to it and go merrily on skipping through our lives almost entirely unaffected by it. Some of the people we send off come back. Some don't. What did they do while they were gone? We don't know. That is the point of this book. Most of us have not seen or experienced war, but through the stories O'Brien has written here you can live a tiny portion of it with him. The briefest glimpse but oh so revealing. The point is not to be a quaint, sweet history accounting the exact, carefully ordered, completely understood facts where you close the book and go, "Awwww, wasn't that nice?" So don't look for that. Listen to the stories. Let yourself live them, too.
I guess it is the nature of the book, but it's got me to thinking about the brevity of life. No human has the right to take away the life of another human. I have significant doubts about the right of a government to declare war. If there ever would be an appropriate time to declare war, than it had better be very well thought out. Everyone should know exactly what the reason is. After all, what is war really? It is a group of humans who happened to have been born in a particular place, speak a particular language, and hold a particular set of values, deciding that another group of humans who happened to have been born in a different place, speak a different language, and hold a different set of values, are unfit to live. That's what things come down to – death.
Perhaps this is one reason I have been dwelling on this lately. We all realize that we are going to die at some point, yes, but that realization seems to wax and wane a bit throughout life. It waxes larger and larger when we hear of how suddenly death can be upon us. When will it be my turn?
This question has been especially prevalent to me over the last couple months. I recently gave up a long fostered dream. It was making me miserable, true, but it was a dream none-the-less. With the release of the dream there was also a disappearance of the certainty of my future. I was going to be a success! I had an answer for every question you could throw at me. And now I don't. If this sounds petty, I'm sorry, it's just a really weird feeling. So now I reevaluate my life. My dream has suffered a long and drawn out dreadful death, but is now laid to rest, though I am still in mourning of it at times. The future is beautifully (and frighteningly!) blank. I had my plan to be sure my life was not some meaningless waste, but that plan has been rendered useless.
I think that a better option is to live day by day. This poses a danger and a freedom. The danger is that of frittering your life away, waking up in forty years, or what have you, and going, "Drat. I just lived a meaningless waste of a life." That is one of my biggest fears. The freedom is harder to explain. I think the difference is you can live day by day according to your own wishes (which leads to that very bad realization later on down the road) or live day by day according to that which God would have you do. This poses the problem of knowing what God would have you to do. The answer is to listen and obey the leading of His Spirit. This then brings up the question of would I actually live each day trying to do what the Spirit led me to do or would it just be a convenient excuse to do what I felt like. Good question. No known answer at this time. Would I like to? Of course. But would I do it? No idea. I hate routine, hate monotony, hate trying to follow daily planners. I think this change will be very good for me and the idea of each day from here on out being unknown and different is thrilling. That's about as close as I can get to telling you what I mean by freedom. There is a freedom of my spirit to quest on in the great adventure, the great exploration. It wouldn't be boring, but rides the fine line of meaninglessness. If this is done well, my life would have great meaning, maybe not the variety that shoots off fireworks so that all within several miles can see and hear about it, but meaning. The kind where you invest in the life of each person you meet, treasure each moment you are given, and fill those who are paralyzed by loneliness all around you. That's what I want to do. I, however, happen to be human, and that is where the other side of the line comes into play. I procrastinate, I am lazy, and I can be rather self-serving. If I end up copping out, that's where I'll end up kicking myself later on. I want to live a life of meaning and purpose but am finding a bit of a challenge since the "guarantee" of it that I pursued so long has come unraveled. Scary and exciting. We'll see.
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