After everything humankind has invented, after everything that was written, after everything that was spoken, researched, discussed, documented, and studied, we are still killing each other. I still can’t find the words for the tragedy; the answer to the simple question of how, after everything we went through as humankind, we get up on one sunny morning and decide to kill each other? Yes, we are still doing it.
Do you wake up in the morning and decide to kill someone? Is that your dream in life? Is that what we came to do on this earth, to kill and be killed? I am asking myself, how does anyone wake up one day and decide to kill? Is it simply part of human nature? Has it always been and will always be a part of the story of humankind? Killing each other? Is it a basic instinct? Perhaps.
I don’t think entire nations wake up on one bright day and decide to kill each other as their hobby. I think politicians, people of power, people of money, and big industries are brainwashing different groups of people to hate each other and to categorize yourself and the other. Black and white, bad and good, right and left, this one or that one. But who cares what you are? Don’t we all have a heart, a wish to love and be loved, to fulfill our dreams in life? No one is born with the dream to kill other people. People are being brainwashed, incited, pushed, fed with constant propaganda to hate each other. People are so deeply brainwashed that they are willing to kill another human being, a child, a woman, with a heart, with dreams, with feelings. A life full of dreams, love, family, and friends is just cut in one cruel unbearable moment.
Who profits from this war? Which industries earn money on this war? Who fuels the money in this horrible war? In this horrible propaganda and mutual hatred?
I don’t hate you. We are the same. Borders don’t really define our identity; that’s what we’re told. Our dreams, our soul, our hearts do.
When you take a strong side in any polarization, you are playing into the hands of politicians, people of power, corrupt industries. Every crisis, every war, every pandemic has people who finance it, who gain from it, who are rewarded with money and power. We are not rewarded by hating each other, by choosing sides; we are only losing.
There are no sides in this conflict; there are no winners; there are only casualties, there are only losers. If you can’t stand your neighbor because they are not voting for the same party as you do or have a different cultural background or position in life, how do you expect the people in the Middle East to live side by side?
There will be no other way than finding the common, than opening your heart, than starting to talk to each other. Seeing human beings for their humanity and not for the category under which they fall.
As I cry and am heartbroken for every life lost, for every broken family, for life that was aborted, for dreams that will not happen, for families who lost their most precious, whose life will never look the same, I pray for peace. As I cry, I pray for peace, for healing, for human kindness, for an open heart. I send a hug and love to all of those who need it now. People are injured, devastated now; please drop your weapons.
Photo: Alex Verlaak & Gaelle Spaas