5 Pragmatic Lessons I Learned from 78 Days of Bombing

#1: It doesn’t matter unless you can pack it up in a bag

Our greatest teachers are often experiences that scar us.

You can never prepare for the bombing. It just happens. And when it does, life becomes absurd and precious. So there you are, in your hallway, waiting for an explosion in the dark. When you hear a blast, fear hits you on the head. Then comes relief. Nothing got into your room. In the end, you are fatigued. You go to bed before the post-raid warning.

It took me years to forget the sound of air-raid sirens. We didn’t spend time in shelters. Life had to go on, so you’d hear them on the street or amid college lectures. You couldn’t do much about it. There’s no way out when you’re on the bus crossing the bridge.

It was supposed to be a great year. When I got a scholarship at a prestigious department, the world powers punished our autocrat with a military operation. Was I to cram up for exams so I didn’t lose my status? Or live one day at a time while buildings were falling like lego bricks? Military interventions, no matter how target-focused, always have “collateral damage“ in human lives.

Bombing is an experience I wouldn’t wish to anyone. Still, it transformed how I saw life at the age of 19. Here are the key five lessons I learned:

#1: It Doesn’t Matter Unless You Can Pack It Up in a Bag

The night the bombing started I went to the basement of my friend’s building. Not being bombed before, I put my special survival kit in a rucksack: a wallet, my high school diary, another one I’d just started, and my childhood stuffed toy. Those memories kept me alive. The money was there in case I had nowhere to go.

I left behind all the clothes, books, my dear bed, everything that built up my life. I could do without possessions but I couldn’t do without recollections.

When you see how close and accidental death is, you realize you can live without everything. All physical items lose their value. So does money if you can’t leave the country. You only need it to eat and be safe. At 19, I understood a dollar isn’t always the means to fix your life. It just helps you to get things more quickly and easily.

In only a few days life got pretty absurd. Unpredictability killed all my goals. But looking back, I see how it has transformed me.

#2: You Are More of a Cockroach and Less of a Snowflake Than You Think

You don’t know how much you can handle, but it’s definitely more than what you believe.

If someone had told me Belgrade would be bombed, I’d call them insane. It was our New York, the city that welcomed everyone. If I had known the bombing would last nearly three months, I would have sewed myself a straitjacket. But here I am, still relatively safe and sound.

As a being, you are designed to go through life-threatening situations. In fact, you can quickly adapt to life in the worst conditions imaginable. Life didn’t stop in World War II. Women were bearing children all the time.

I didn’t get through the experience unharmed. For years I had some kind of PTSD: I would flinch at a loud sound. If someone approached me from the back, I’d jump in surprise. I couldn’t sleep at night, listening to a hum that sounded like a bomber F-117. Wasn’t the war over? It took me months to realize that was the night train, three blocks away. My system was still sore and sensitive for any kind of surprise.

You can endure horror even if you think you can’t. It’s not that you always go unharmed. After a war, people are left with emotional wounds. Their mental health crumbles. But you can keep on living with your scars, even heal. Your soul has an enormous capacity to regenerate.

War teaches you that you can take a lot, but at the same time it also deflates your ego. Life isn’t about you after all.

#3: It Doesn’t Matter What You Want

Before the bombing, I saw a bright future. I got to the college I wanted. I was going to earn tons of money. I’d get an apartment, travel, buy myself a better life.

Then came air raids and my wishes became irrelevant.

To those humans in the sky, you don’t exist. Everything you are and that’s dear to you has no meaning to the people on TV talking about the enemy targets. Your economy, celebrities, and cultural heritage are insignificant. Your needs and expectations don’t matter.

You are a small dot, a numberless civilian. And so is your dad — a factory worker, and your cousin who might get forcefully mobilized. Your only wish is that you all stop being dots on someone’s bombsight. That it all ends and you all survive.

You finally realize it’s not about you. You’re nothing special compared to other people. This idea grounds you. The universe isn’t plotting against you. You won’t die if someone doesn’t love you. Or if you don’t earn an X amount of money. Misery happens to everyone. It makes you grateful for what you have: Those people who call you during the day to tell you the latest war joke. The old neighbor who gives you half the cake she made.

At night, you live without electricity. Throughout the day, you pick the pieces of your broken life. There is nothing that diminishes your self-centered ego like a good round bombing.

But raids don’t make you the Dalai Lama of wisdom. You have a full chance to sweat the small stuff again.

#4: Things Get Back to “Normal“ Quickly

Before the war, I worked as a babysitter. I lost touch with the family as they moved to the other side of the city. When the bombing started, I met the father of the baby in a bar. He was much calmer with the whole situation and tried to cheer me up:

“Once this whole thing passes, you’ll come to our new house. We’ll see each other often.”

“No, we won’t,“ Somehow, I knew that after the war we would all go back to our old lives. And so it was.

In those anxiety-ridden days, people would meet on the street. “Stay safe“, we would tell each other softly. “Ah, don’t worry. It won’t hurt me,” the other person would say. The invisible danger was looming around us. We couldn’t do anything about it, no matter how resourceful and sharp we were. It was on us to hide in our apartments and hope we wouldn’t become its victims. We were hoping for the day when there would be no need to isolate ourselves from the danger in the sky. We were holding firmly to a bare idea of life in a totally ruined country.

But when the intervention was over and things got back to “normal“, our old problems came back. After the raids, you stress about exams again. A stranger in the street makes you furious. You forget about the fear you felt when you counted seconds till a flying missile hit the target. You could hear it whooshing through the air.

Humans are ridiculous creatures. In anguish, we crave for a better life. When things get fine, we panic about trivialities again. When life hits you hard, remember this will also pass. Once again you’ll go mad because a guy cuts you off in traffic. In distress be aware that day would come.

And fight the unease with laughter.

#5: Laughter Saves You from Going Insane

In the days of air raids, our government organized concerts in public squares. They turned people’s fear into spite against the invisible enemy. Many had sheets of paper with printed targets. They would stick them to their jackets and sang their hearts out. These mortals were frustrated they couldn’t live a normal life to the point they were defying pilots with their songs. When you can’t run away from your fear, you go toward it. And you even mock the situation.

At night, my family would often spend time with our neighbors. There were 12 of us in our apartment on the ground floor. We had a plan: In case a missile hit the building, we could run outside easily… Into the night, into the open, with no shelter near. People are willing to risk everything when they are grabbing life by a straw.

With blinds lowered down and windows open so the glass didn’t get shattered, we sat in the living room. Our neighbor would read a humorous children’s book aloud. And we all laughed, listening to her voice. I never wanted her to stop. Our common laughter softened the tension and made those March evenings warmer. Spring is the most beautiful season in Belgrade. That one was covered with dread.

My small nation used humor as a weapon against a much stronger enemy. That was the only thing they couldn’t take away from us. We laughed at a clip of two drunk men challenging bombers on their makeshift bridge in the middle of nowhere. Laughter transformed anxiety and fear into something bearable.

When there’s no way out, laugh at your ridiculous situation. Fear helps you distance yourself from the overwhelming. It helped me stay sane.

Bombing Gave a New Dimension to My Life

I could never have imagined my city would be destroyed. War was something that happened on TV or in old movies. On the morning preceding the first night of bombing, my younger sister played an old hit:

“Just let there be no war No madness among people…”

And then it happened to us all. War became a part of our life.

You don’t necessarily get out of the whole experience as a stronger person. 22 years later, my dad still watches all the news on TV throughout the day. He started it on the first day of the air raids. He wanted to hear what was hit and how many people died.

War molds you even when you think it’s not that big a deal. It ties your hands, so your everyday life is more of waiting than doing.

But even when there’s no way out, you have a choice. Yes, we couldn’t get out of the country. We had nowhere to hide. We were locked inside, with our autocrat in the shelter, and bombs sieving through the nights. But we reached out to each other, shared food, and laughed whenever we could. We hoped for the better and made each other feel warm.

Wartime leaves a crater in you. When it all passes, you try not to think about it. If you’re lucky, you start forgetting what it was like after a while. You move on without realizing it. I couldn’t wish anyone to go through bombing. Still, my atrocity was nothing compared to the people on the front lines. No one I loved was wounded or killed. But the whole experience has transformed the way I saw life while I was still an adolescent.

I see people of other nations who grew up blissfully in solid systems without huge turbulences. And I feel they are missing something. To them, what I’ve been through is ungraspable. To me, it’s a part of life.

You don’t prepare for the bombing. It just happens and changes you forever.

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