I’ve been around longer than the years I have left. I’ve been to Vietnam combat twice and lived to tell about it. In that process my back was screwed up and I’ve carried that around all these years. Hell, I even got drunk for a couple of decades!
Why do I bore you with this? Simply because I have a little more idea about what makes this world tick than some. And the fact is that we got here by ridding ourselves of a few essentials now considered baggage, or worse. Understand, I wouldn’t talk about this if I didn’t see the horrific difference in this world in just fifty years. That’s longer than most reading this have been alive so thank your lucky stars if combat is not a thing in your past.
You feel more than understand this difference. On the news you hear one side of things one place and another side of things elsewhere. A division between fact and lie that seems unremarkable. Unremarkable unless you’ve already been horribly lied to. the kind of lie that sent us to Vietnam. There was a draft then so if you chose to take a break from school you were Vietnam bound, and it was all a lie. Kind of shakes your faith in your country.
Between the lie and the carnage is found a truth so important that those who have more than enough to get by can choose to ignore it. Once baptized by fire you begin to understand the wheels upon wheels driving the universe. How did he just get his head blown off and I got home relatively unscathed? Why were we lied to by our own government? What are mankind’s governments worth? They sure as hell don’t instigate peace. They sure as hell don’t make everyone’s life easier. They never have made anyone’s life easier now have they? Maybe in retirement if you’ve put enough away while you were able. Maybe you inherit a ton of cash. Most do not in this world. Most human beings die younger than they should and war is merely the means to that end.
Then, of course, there is God. Forgotten or dismissed by so many does He matter even a little? Let’s look at the fifty years I spoke of. God was gradually put aside for material pleasures. He might even have been pushed aside by some; those groups of political assassins of religion, Faith and morality. All of those have been shunted onto a side track but they’re still there. It just takes a firm stride and calm head to find them. A head that can put away the immorality long enough to see the light. That light that is missing and that light is discovery which shines on something calm and beneficial. That light that brings peace to the heart in times like these and purpose to the soul. In a word: God.