Time to Pull Your Soldier Weight

Will you thank yourself in the future?

(Photo credit: Valery Tenevoy)

It’s been a little over a week since Russia waged war on Ukraine.

I can’t stop thinking of the women going into labour to the sound of bombs. Of newborn babies fighting for their lives while being transferred to bomb shelters. Of the differently-abled people who no longer have caretakers. Of families and loved-up couples separated by the need to defend their home country. Some of them are OK but they’re not fine at all. 

 And so at times, I get overwhelmed by an urge to cry. 

We Play a Part in the Making of War

I know some of you are pro-Ukraine and maybe others of you are pro-Russia. I’m not here to talk about sides or to point fingers or to convince you of what I think. 

I’m here to say we are also to blame for this war.

What role did we play in allowing these issues to escalate to war? It didn’t seem to me we were interested until the first bomb dropped. Are we that desensitized that we need to see blood before we realize how bad things are?

My point is we’re late. And we’re late because we don’t care about governmental and economic issues until we see a grandma having to pick up a gun to defend her country.

This catastrophic event shouldn’t even be happening in the 21st century! 

Never has a society been so successful, healthy and wealthy as ours is today. We have high literacy rates, life expectancy rates, birthing rates, the list goes on… and YET we still allow ourselves to live through barbaric wars.

What’s the point of getting better only to go backwards?

This war is showing us how cruel life can be for every single person in the world when absolute power rests in the hand of a man. When power is so centralized, nobody gets a say or a vote as to how things should play out.

Just look at the Russian people.

Right now they are being economically and socially cut off from the world for a crime they did not commit. The worst part? No one is going to feel the pain of sanctions as much as the Russian people are. Putin won’t. In fact, his life will probably remain somewhat unchanged. 

Here’s the harsh truth: where there is great suffering there is great profit.

There are some people that are benefiting from this war. War is lucrative business and they don’t want you to know that. So they will come up with any excuse to validate the need for war. And if you listen to them long enough, you’ll be convinced we need another war to undo this war soon.

We Have a Responsibility

There comes a point where we can no longer blame the world’s problems on governments and authoritarian leaders. 

We have to acknowledge we are part of the problem because we have become complacent. Numb, cold and out of touch. We have allowed things to get way too ugly before we feel we need to care.

Every one of us, according to our actions or inactions, are all building or destroying right here on Earth.

In my opinion, our best option is to exit the system of war altogether. To start afresh. To seek alternative ways of governing ourselves that don’t require bloodshed to exert power or dominance or leadership. To unlearn everything we have been taught about the age-old problems of war, poverty and violence.

Only then can we find newer, kinder, more efficient solutions to govern ourselves.

Like the brilliant Albert Einstein once said: “We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

We have a responsibility to think outside the box and pull our soldier weight if we wish to save and rebuild what remains of our broken society.

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