Remember…
I have, quite thankfully, never been to war. I have never had to question the value of my own life over that of a complete stranger, or rationalize the deaths of others for the sake of abstract concepts like Freedom or Patriotism or the indecipherable motives of politics.
Thankfully for all of us, some have. My own father’s grandfather was an original RAF flyer in WWI, he was lost, as were several of his brothers, cousins, and uncles. My mother’s grandfather trained men for the Queens service in WWII. Again, brothers, cousins and countless others lost. Great men all, in my humble estimation, and more than reason enough to keep the memory of our past, present and future soldiers in mind – not just today – but every day.
It saddens me deeply that, in our callous and self-involved culture, the tradition and keeping of Rememberance has gone far by the wayside. Here in my own home and native land, it is still technically a statutory holiday, but most companies (my current employer included) use it as a loophole to get an extra day off at Christmas. Many who do take the 11th of November off of work, spend it like any Saturday of the year, shopping in malls that should be closed, lunching in restaurants that should be dark or watching Maury exploit one more trailer park babymama.
Here is my one tiny request of all of you. What could be more important than millions of lives, bled out in mud and barbed wire, wrought into flame and explosions of flesh, sent cold and alone to the bottom of every ocean – lives that were given to service YOUR freedom and frivolity – what could honestly be more important to remember? Your license plate number? Your Yahoo password? What day THE DARK KNIGHT comes out on DVD? Who was voted off of Dancing With The Stars?
If you can’t be bothered to keep it in your mind, or in your heart, every day, or even for one measly day out of the year… Take that one minute. ONE out of half a million minutes in the year. Take that one minute and think about some poor 20 year-old kid… thousands of miles from home, scared, alone and dying in the middle of a man-made Hell on Earth. Think about that kid for one single goddamn minute. Imagine it was your kid. Imagine it was YOU. And then appreciate every little thing you have in this life, because we ALL owe it to that kid and a million more like him that did what they thought was right to keep their own families safe. They are still out there. In Afghanistan and Iraq and all over this troubled planet, our children, our brothers and sisters, even our parents are out there doing what they think is right. And they do it all for us. I think that’s worth at least one minute a year. It’s worth every minute.
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