War

Maybe We Should Stop Glorifying War

Maybe that’s the answer.

I watched in awe as the soldiers bombed, shot, butchered their enemies. Dead mangled bodies scattered around the mountain. I cheered them from my couch as their guns sprayed bullets and killed the bad guys. This is a scene of eradication of evil. I am rooting for the good guys.

It’s cool to be the good guys. It doesn’t matter that what they did as they loaded their guns and fired towards the enemies was also exactly what the enemies were doing. The bad guys had to die when they did it because well, they’re bad. And when the good guys did it, it’s very very cool — and Hollywood doesn’t hold back on this — because the good guys, the good guys are the epitome of the heroes.

I worship these heroes.

They rid the world of evil and yes, I know, that’s quite a broad term. But bear with me — they rid the world of wickedness. When many of us enjoy the comfort of our homes, these people fight in the front lines.

Although the more I read, the more I familiarized myself with the history, the more I am questioning what we’re really fighting for. The reasons to justify the lost lives, the scorched Earth. What the heck exactly are we sending our father, our mother, sisters, brothers, daughters, sons, grandchildren, husbands, wives, best friends out there for?

As I sat on my couch on a Saturday night, watching a movie about a war, comfortably cuddled with my husband, I couldn’t help but think,

Hollywood must have toned down the goriness of the war, right?

They can’t possibly show how bad the real bloodshed is. Right?

I mean, sure, you want it to be realistic and all but surely, the real battlefield is far, far worse than what is depicted in a movie? The things we see on the screen, surely, they are the watered-down version of the real scene?

If it is true, if it’s truly way, way worse on the real battlefield, I can’t even imagine. The blood, the bones, the flesh — the atrocity.

It must be extremely horrific.

I can’t even imagine how much more horrific it can be from its Hollywood depiction.

The Hollywood depiction is already so, so bad.

Is there an answer — an end to the wars?

It is tiring, constantly fighting, constantly losing someone — fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, husbands, wives, daughters, sons, grandchildren, is it not?

Even when those fallen are more than willing to fall, it’s never just them, is it? There are families. Parents who lost their children, husbands — wives who lost their life partner, children who grow up with their parents. The narrative, it’s more than them, is it not?

Will we ever stop fighting?

There are so many hungry mouths to feed. Yet money we can spend on feeding the poor, actual human beings, we pour into wars. Does no one else think this is bizarre, and rather odd, considering we want our kind to survive, to thrive for millennia?

Why are we using our resources to kill and not to save?

Sure, we still need to spend for the country’s safety, freedom, independence ‘’yada yada yada’’. Still.

I know everyone has their own battles, their loved ones to protect. But is fighting the answer?

Would you teach your children to “kill or be killed”?

I love action movies.

I love watching good guys kick bad guys’ asses.

I love seeing karma walk around, making sure everyone is paying their dues, keeping the world’s balance in check.

But I have to ask — has Hollywood glorified war a little too much?

Is that perhaps one of our issues?

That we are watching the wars fully cocooned in the safety of our own homes, not realizing that these people walking around in the dusty desert, firing their AKs and whatnot — these very people who lay their lives on the line believing they’re protecting something valuable — are as real as daylight.

These are people with husbands, wives, children, parents, best friends.

We glorify the heroes.

The people who kill the bad guys. The people who restore peace to humanity. The people who beat evil.

We worship these characters — not fully understanding that these characters are sharing the same world with us. Not fully understanding that while we are able to enjoy a glass of wine every Saturday, Sunday night, these real-life characters have to freeze and burn in the desert, kill another human being and somehow find a way back home and live with all the appalling memories.

We rarely take the time to ponder, to dig deeper.

We worship the heroes.

We attribute special qualities in large quantities to our heroes. Courage, strength, resilience, determination, all the ingredients we need to create a real-life Superman / Wonder Woman. In the process, we forget.

We forget the family of the man / the woman— the parents, the siblings, the children, the partner, the best friends. We forget the man/woman is, well, a man / a woman.

We want goodness oozing from every pore of society. We abhor evil, despise immorality and therefore, the heroes need to exist to weed out the evil.

Therefore, Hollywood needs to portray the heroes to the nine.

Therefore, wars are justified.

All the lives lost, the Earth scorched. Everything fully justified.

It’s necessary.

A necessary evil is still a necessity.

I don’t know. Perhaps this is all far too complicated for a little lady like me to fathom.

What do I know? I am but a little yoga teacher. Of course, I am against the war. Of course, I am against violence.

But put me in the same room as a man who has tortured, raped and killed women, children who were not able to defend themselves.

I would like to say that I would try to comprehend and not go crazy. A lot (but not all) of bad guys learn how to be bad from their closest people after all, and many of them have some kind of brain defects.

Easy for me to condemn when I don’t have what they have when I don’t live their lives. Hay-wired brain. Traumas.

But I still don’t know if I won’t do something to them if I were to be locked with them alone in a room. They have, after all, done bad things.

Apology if I’m going off on a tangent.

I still would like the wars to stop.

I would like to have parents never have to separate from their children. Husbands and wives never have to worry if they’ll ever see their significant others again.

I want children to play with their parents, grandchildren to outlive their parents, their grandparents, like how it’s supposed to be. Like how nature intended with the aging process.

I’ve watched my grandmother bury two of her children. Good God, I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.

Why? Why are we fighting? What are we fighting for?

Why do so many people have to bury their loved ones six feet under?

Perhaps Hollywood should glorify the war less.

Perhaps we should glorify the war less. Redefine victory, rewrite history, because good Lord for a race as intelligent as us, it sure is a shame how many history books are written on the same damn thing and still, the bloody history repeats itself.

How many more? How many more history books, Hollywood movies we need to stop the carnage?

I love action movies. But the true-life stories though…

Deaths, annihilation, destruction.

I love my heroes. But I’m getting tired of praying for them, watching them take the bullets day in day out.

I’m just so tired. Tired of the same narrative repeating over and over and over again, like a broken record.

I’m exhausted. I’m sick and tired of watching parents cry on their children’s graves. Children growing up without their parent(s).

I’m sick and tired of all the losses, the heartaches.

Aren’t you?

Thank you for reading my midnight rant. Here is more food for thought for you:

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