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| sometimes
you just have to have a little faith. | | |
| When I heard a story this afternoon about the recent revelation of the murders in Haditha, Iraq, it made me feel sick to my stomach. I almost had to pull over on my way home from work when I heard portions of an interview with a twelve year old girl who recounted how she watched American soldiers burst into her (civilian) home, shoot and kill her father, mother, and six year old brother while she lay silent on the floor, pretending to be dead. She told the story with a haunting absence of emotion. No tears, no pauses. Other Iraqis interviewed about the massacre (let's just call it what is is, shall we?) expressed horror, but also a similar sense of detachment. This is not, they assert, the first of this type of incident.
How can we expect it to be the last when nothing is changing? Thanks to the positive spin the promises of "progress," and the repeated assurances that the "overexposure" of the violence is the work of an evil liberal media empire, Americans will probably just turn the page of their newspapers until they find the comics, leaving a screaming headline to be drowned in a puddle of spilled coffee. (which was most likely purchased at a fraction of its work thanks to foreign slave labor, but that's beside the point at hand) Because, in all likelihood, the administration will continue to take steps to prevent the full details of these atrocities to come to light, it's likely that most Americans won't even be given the opportunity to express their anger and frustration due to a lack of knowledge. But even if all of the facts were available, I have my doubts that the kind of outrage My Lai sparked in 1968 would ever result. Does that make me a cynic or a realist? I would love to be proven wrong on this particular point.
I don't even know if anyone besides Lauren reads this. Anyone else who does will probably just dismiss it as the ramblings of another "crazy liberal." Partisan divisions have made it so easy ignore the facts by labeling them as a political attack. To add a little "balance," how about I use the Fox News motto: "We Report, You Decide."
Facts: Four Marine Humvees entered Haditha, Iraq on November 19, 2005. A roadside bomb exploded, killing a Marine and wounding two others. The Marines jumped out and set up a defensive posture. A taxi carrying five Iraqi men pulled up. The Marines ordered the unarmed men out of the vehicle, and the five Iraqis were killed.
The Marines quickly began a search of four houses. Most of the Iraqi civilians killed were inside their houses. Only in that final house did Marines find an Iraqi male with an assault rifle. He, too, was killed. In total, 24 Iraqi civilians found dead in Haditha, including 11 women and children, with eyewitness testimonies confirming that it was the work of American marines. Later, it is discovered that the families of those killed received monetary compensation from the U.S. Military. Pentagon records show that this compensation was dispensed for deaths that occurred due to a roadside bomb.
I guess this is the "You Decide" part.
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| Surprise! I'm not sleeping! It could have something to do with the fact that I slept for 11 and a half hours last night, but probably more to do with the fact that I can't stop thinking.
Backpacking was amazing, as expected. Even though I felt like a kindergartner in high school, what with all the new information to digest. I learned that I was basically doing everything wrong and should consider myself lucky not to have already become bear food. But that's okay. Live and learn! Mom and I got a little lost when we ventured out on our own on the second day, but we figured out where we went wrong and got back on the correct trail.
It's basically useless to try to describe what it's like being out there, you feel exhilarated, terrified, serene, alone, capable, and helpless. There is really nothing like it to make you understand that we as human beings are really only a small piece of the puzzle. Really, everything I saw had been there so much longer than I have, so much longer than civilization has, in fact. It really gives you a newfound respect for the complexity and self-sustainability of nature.
When your primary concerns are food, water, and shelter, other problems and cares are certainly put into perspective. That's not to say that they're unimportant, but self-reliance helps you to see that you are absolutely one-hundred percent able to handle them.
I suppose all of the thoughts I had on the trip are finally catching up to me and bombarding me all at once while I'm trying to sleep. I thought running away to the woods would help me to escape the messiness and unpredictability of life. Instead, it has only left me asking more questions. | | |
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| This is it. This is life, we are here, now, on this Earth. Call it material, call it base, but its the truth. My entire life I have been made to believe that merely had to be bearable and that my real reward lay in the future. "Wait until you're older, you'll understand." "Wait until high school, things will be so much better." "Wait until college, it will all finally make sense." No, I refuse. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of sitting around waiting for the next thing to look forward to to happen so that it can be over and I can look forward to something else. I am surrounded by beauty, and divinity, and opportunities to discover things about myself and my life and my place in this world. Once, Olivia showed me a list of hundreds of things she loved about life. They were so small, things like "cheese sandwiches at the market" but also so significant, like "feeling loved." Surrounded.
I feel like I have finally escaped from a suffocating enclosure in which the last opinion that mattered was my own. It is so liberating to finally understand the value of the immediate. I heard this somewhere, "This is the moment where you decide what you're going to take from the past and incorporate into the future."
Sometimes I think we don't give ourselves enough credit as human beings. I look at the people in my life and I am amazed at their capacities and strengths. It hurts me to know that they will always be searching for answers and validity and the unattainable state of "having it all figured out," exhausting every possible avenue besides simply loving themselves. It's hard to do, we're made to believe that we're always failing in some aspect, failing to live up to our potential, failing to please our parents or our professors or our friends or our more-than-friends. But all that truly matters is loving ourselves. I have found that in keeping that in mind, things tend to fall into place.
Here I am, sitting at my desk surrounded by photographs of people whom I love and who love me. The music from an old record player in my sister's bedroom creeps through the walls of my room and my heart and makes me want to cry out of happiness and amazement and thankfulness that, in the randomness of life, my collection of atoms was lucky enough to bump into all of theirs. This has been happening to me a lot lately, these moments of overwhelming appreciation. During periods of my life where I felt overcome by a sense of loss or bewilderment at the course my life had taken, I found it nearly impossible to believe I could ever appreciate anything again. And yet, every time, I am able to come back. The resilience of the human sprit will never cease to amaze me.
Letting go of control, guilt, shame, regret, negativity, revenge leaves so much more room in the mind and the soul for these feelings of overwhelming appreciation.
also, completely unrelated, but very interesting:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5422695 | | |
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