Choice

I always have a choice. I don't have to read the news. I don't have to think about what life must be like for people who have to fear being caught in the cross fire of "extremists" or "insurgents" and "peace keepers" or for the soldiers who have to serve when many entered as a means to pay for college. I don't have to think about it. I don't have to fear it. I always have that choice and I am quite aware of it. Yet something hits me when I read little blurbs here and there about "59 killed" or "U.S. continues to pound Fallujah." I think about numbers. Then I attach numbers to faces that I don't know but have seen. Names, numbers, faces, uniforms, children, adult, women, men, limbless, lifeless. Well, these are only words and I always have the choice not to think about them with any sort of meaning. Perhaps I would if I could remind myself long enough that I really don't have to care.

On the one hand, I despise the "authority" with which leaders decide to risk others lives without having to truly ever justify, apologize, or even hold themselves accountable. On the other, I would not ever want to wake up every day knowing that I had made the decision to commit "troops" to a war in which the peace would be far deadlier and the occupation, endless? For that alone, I acknowledge something in a leader's character that I do not think I have, nor desire to have. I don't know what the word is for that. I suppose you could pick your own as many critics do, depending upon where your politics lie. I like to think though we could do better by refusing those simple alliances and demanding more as an entire population of the United States. Refusing. Demanding. Those too are only words and on this page and at this moment they mean so little. They seem so small. Like a face. Like a few sentences flashing quickly across a page that tells us HERE about the suffering of those people over THERE and remind us in that silent space that follows, that WE have a choice. We can always turn our heads and look away. We can always turn the channel and turn the rest of the world off.

peace.