War and Peace: Veterans Day thots

 

Thanking the veterans for their service. My Grandpa lost a twin brother who fought in France and is buried there. Marc was a marine.. One of my nieces went thru Officer training for the Marines and is stationed in Hawaii. ..and I was in the Army reserves! I had just come home from almost a year in France and wanted to continue to learn French so I signed up and went to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey Ca. Free language training! Looking back, it's hard to believe that I did it . I'm not gonna lie. Much of it was weird. Like boot camp, for example. I wasn't really all that patriotic either. I had just spent a year in France and there's a lot of adaptation to a new culture that makes you sort of embaressed of your own cultural norms.

I've always been anti war. But it's a privileged thing to be. It's easy to say that until your family, your land, your way of life is threatened.
I do wonder about how people ever get over it .. How do the japanese ever forgive us for what we did to them? the vietnamese?
The native american Indians? In mankato, where there was the massacre of Indians there's a monument that says, "Forgive Everyone Everything". Wow. How does that happen? by the Grace of God I guess.

I was lucky. I never had to go fight a war. Not yet anyway. I never had to say goodbye to a child who was leaving to fight in a war. Thank God. The closest thing to war on my homeland was 9/11. and now veterans day is 11/11.. In numerology, an 11 is about the transformation from the physical to the spiritual.

Interesting, huh?