Tomorrow’s battlefield

I keep trying to write my next post but every time the words escape me.

I’m not moved by the fire of knowing oppression or the force of having something to lose. I don’t have a great monster to fight or heroic blade to wield. I’m nothing much really.

Why do I even speak when I know I’m just a tiny voice whispering in the storm? It’s not because I know all the answers or think that I can change the world.
Half the time I doubt myself so. Am I just a dreamer who knows nothing of truth and harsh reality?
Yet, if I am, do I then sacrifice the hopes of a beautiful togetherness for a bitter fight where I can so easily forget the light of tomorrow in the smoke and powder?

I have a dream you see, just like everyone does. Oh, nothing fancy or great.
I look round and we’re all holding onto some solid reality to fight from. Some certainty that stops us being caught in the rushing river of life and change. For some it’s the truth they know that is absolute and as such prevents all other truths existing in the same space, for others its a deep hurt or a blazing scar that has to be acknowledged or paid for. We create our solid worlds like freezing the waters into icebergs but it doesn’t change the flow of water that we try so hard to make disappear. Then we hold on and can’t see that others are afraid too.
I dream of people with eyes open and caring. Listening and seeing. Knowing that all the important fights they once had are of no importance any more. What everything will look like I don’t know but I dream of the feeling of harmony.

For those who’ve seen Les Mis there’s a scene where all the cast sing different songs but all tie into one harmony of music ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IddP8AAIGTQ ). That’s what I imagine, although a song with more hope in it and less about an impending battle.

Some point maybe we’ll have a song of harmony where our words and views are different but somehow they can live together. A point where it’s not so much about right or wrong as coming together.

We don’t get to stop the world changing but maybe it’s not as much about choosing which change it is as knowing that there can be more than one world in the same spot and that, that can make both more in the long run. If only we can stop long enough to see the humanity in the eyes looking at us.

It seems so crazy at times, watching from a distance, that something as simple as being taught the awful things of the past as well as the good, can be so controversial. Or that all the crimes of our ancestors can be held to be on the shoulders of those not alive then.
I can’t see that either are healthy things or that anyone can see them as right., yet so much the cacophony of battle does ring that all is seen as war.

Is there a chance that, in saying what was done in the past was wrong and letting our children learn of and from that, we can come together more. And is there some hope that we can be seen to be trying to change and that, that can be enough that we can be seen as more than the past, more than monsters?
And, before you say that’s not what we’re angry about or worried about, is there a chance that the noise is so loud that what is really being said is getting lost and twisted and that shouting more is only adding to the storm rather than making the words clearer?

I’m not moved by fire or force. Just by sadness because I think that most of the fighters were never enemies, just people who don’t hear each other anymore and just see twisted monsters in place of the people who they really face.
I’m moved by not wanting to have to imagine the lives and futures lying on tomorrows battlefield, dead for no reason other than too much noise.