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WHAT CAME FIRST?
Friday Nov. 11, 2011
column written/ published from my residence in Cranston (SE Calgary) near the Bow River valley
Morning walk: 4C/39F, soft fresh air on the face, dead-calm mild, few clouds spread around as we walked the dry pond area and circled the ball diamonds in solitude while construction noise from two multi-family sites nearby killed the silence.
Silence and death go together, as do life and arguing – but conflict and vitality of one have in times of war, too often led to the other as eggs led to chickens, or was it the other way ’round?
We call ourselves human, as a respectful term, but would someone please show me or explain the humanity in conflict and war, show me the human-ness in that, please?
One has to wonder, if Americans rather than Canadians/British had won the War of 1812, if there would be any battle over oilsands transmission today? Or, if politics of an upcoming U.S. election was not looming, if approval would not have been fait accompli?
Why couldn’t we solve all international conflicts with hockey game?
G’oh Canada! . . . but I digress,
Cause, effect, words of mass destruction – have been at the root of all conflict, and we continue to be nationalistic, territorial, fierce in our beliefs and staunch in adherence to principle. Do the gloves come off (hockey-fighting metaphor) when words won’t work, or are we humans more prone to violence than to articulation?
Someone once wrote that the first casualty of all war is the truth. If that is correct, what are the truths of war? Is it complex, or simply a chicken-egg thing, a series of smallish events that connect, then snowball, and soon war and death become inevitabilities?
Words and war, history written by winners without the views and words of the vanquished foe or the dead heroes – because their words are not written, they are dead and those who write and speak on their behalf lived in war but never died in war.
Never, never, never give up. – Winston Churchill
Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat. – Anais Nin
The convenient thing about quotes is that we can take something out of its original context and drop it into our own – using the message, words and gravity of the original speaker to enhance or bolster our point.
And sometimes they just make you smile. The inconvenient thing about quotes is that they ring true for so many in so many situations. They help us to remember, lest we ever forget . . .
Eleventh hour of eleventh day of eleventh month – ominous symbolic grim reminder and glorious remembrance of those who fought and helped and worked, those who lived and tried and died, who spent or spilled or lost their youth in wars past and present – our soldiers, our men and women in uniform are uniformly remembered today . . .
Eleventh hour is an interesting and powerful metaphor in our language – more often used in reference to leaving things to the last minute, doing things at the 11th hour . . . but just in time to avoid disaster, just before it is too late.
Which, I think, begs the question of what is just in time, versus what is just too late?
And then, is it ever too late?
In conflict of any kind, it is never too late to try but sometimes too late to make a difference. Some would say the challenge is to know the difference.
Like Churchill, I subscribe to never giving up, which is to mean, for me, that when we commit to something or someone we don’t give up and therefore don’t waste time worrying whether or not it is already too late.
Churchill was speaking about a war effort as well as stating a life-philosophy. Nin was observing reality. They were both right.
As we look back, most of us don’t have personal memories of war and war dead; we have instead the memory of hearing stories or watching films or hearing news – some of which is too recent and too brutal to forget. The legacy of those who bled and died for us in old conflicts now reduced to history books that sit on shelves more than they sit on school desks, we must realize that – fortunately – most of us know nothing of war, experience nothing of war and do not feel the pain of war, because so many fine brave men and women did it for us.
We are forever indebted to them and for that.
Let us all hope, that one day soon earthlings might find a way to live with less conflict and war no more. It seems so simple, when compared to such complex things we’ve figured out – information technology, space flight, medical breakthroughs . . . if we could simply learn not to kill, not to maim, not to blow-up and not to fight with weapons.
Wouldn’t it be so nice if we could raise the bar of conflict, to reduce all conflict to simply a war of words?
Or is that how they get started?
Mark Kolke
308,156
Comments Received:
IS HALF A FAIR DEAL?
Read yesterday early..then went back for today's..I enjoy it tremendously when you ignite thoughts... pictures brought leaping from another's pen... driven...starting with a pause...a deep breath..slow poised then the free-fall of flight into the whirl of the day... The best part the slow opening of possible out comes..the imagined fancies..tastiest bite of day...best if shared. Your words today hit a cord..morning ...if I opened my day without a ponder on the deck I should not have a word to say...each having the ability to move... So many of your words charm me, SJ, Evanston, WY
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