Are you coming to the war? Where fire burns and fear is great. There is no means of escape. Where Death is like a lingering shadow tracing behind His victims. Horrible things have happened here. This is where life and death meet face to face, in a battle to see who will win. This is the birth place of chaos and destruction, this is war.
Today I saw a different life. A life filled with fear and anguish. A life that was consumed by flames. Today I saw true hopelessness. Today, I looked into the eyes of a war refugee.
I always knew the definition of war. But knowing the definition and seeing the results first hand are two different things. As a history student I always took pride in the fact that I knew "exactly" how horrible war can be, and what impact it had on the people involved. Yet as my eyes met theirs I was struck by an overwhelming sense of pain and loss. Never before have I seen such destruction and pain in someone's eyes and face. It was like the remains of war has forever been engraved there. And the scars they bore just reminders of a time where they were the lucky, or unlucky ones, who survived. Like some kind of cruel way of the world to keep them from forgetting. To keep us from forgetting.
As I look into their eyes I could almost see the war within them, still playing off somewhere in the crevices of their sub-conscious minds. I could almost hear the screams of terror, pain and loss in their voices as the spoke. They thought they ran away from the war, but one can never run from such a thing. It's part of the curse.
I never liked war. I never understood the point of it. Yes, we all have different opinions on religion, politics, beliefs and such. But why use conflict? Why start something that will only lead to your own destruction? Yes you may live to "tell the tale". But to what cost? Who says that anyone will be around to listen to your stories? And if so, will you be able to look into another person's eyes and tell them what you did, what you saw? Are you willing to shatter someone else's innocence and hope for something that you consider important? Is it really worth it? All it will do is lead to more death, destruction and poverty. It will engulf our world into the one thing that we've tried to avoid for so long. The one thing that we all fear. The one thing that we all run from. Chaos.
If you really want to start a war then you must be willing to sacrifice it all, and if you aren't willing to do that. Then you know it isn't worth it. The war starts and ends with us. With the choices we make and the people we kill, or let live. As the war goes on we all pay the price. The price of death. Not always physical death, but spiritual death as well. As I looked into those people's eyes I could see their humanity either slipping away, or a huge chunk of it already gone. And who can blame them? How would you react when you see your loved ones being shot and killed? What would you do? What can you do?
As I sit here the questions build up and the answers slip away. I came to realise that war has no actual reason. It's just action after action after action. Yes you do a lot of planning. Bit isn't that planning a reaction to something that had gone wrong in the past? That's the problem. We always tend to act and ask questions later.
Yet as I look at these people I still see a bit of hope in their eyes. Hope for a new, better life. And maybe that can happen. People get saved every day. It's only through hardship that one can start to see the light. For darkness can't co exist if there is no light, and vice versa. I'm reminded of a quote that once said "only in the darkness can you see the stars". And maybe that's what I saw in their eyes, the stars. They saw the stars and they followed them. They did not run, they were just brave enough to look up while the others were busy looking down. That's when they saw the stars, the light in their otherwise darkened sky.