Hmm...
I could have addressed some of the very good points you've made, but I decided to write about something else - let's see if someone can get something out of it, eh? So here it goes:
I'm not sure I would want to call it a war, although I see a lot of similarities. To me it's more of a way – a road I travel along, if you so will. I'd call it my journey of life. I don't know where it leads me to, I only know I need to travel on.
Sometimes, while I'm traveling, there are obstacles. Some of them I can just brush aside or kick 'em out of my way, but some are just too immobile to do that and some are too slippery to get a hold of 'em.
So what can I do? Surrender, end my journey, and settle down for the rest of my life in the place where I've been stopped?
No, I can't have that, I need to travel on. If there are obstacles which I can't move out of my way, or which I cannot climb, I just go around them – even if that means that I'd have to go a few miles back on the path I've already walked – or even if that means that I'd have to beat my own path through the jungle of life until I find another path that suits my direction.
So yeah, I think that's basically it – a seemingly never-ending journey on unknown paths to an unknown destination. At some points in my life I thought I had already reached my destination, but soon found out that I had just found a nice comfortable place to rest and relax for a while, so that I could regain the strength to travel on. So, after some rest, I stood up, grabbed my little package which contains some stuff I had found on my way, and moved on.
I'm a traveler – I may see some war scenarios on my way, but those aren't my wars - I am in no war. Surrender and settle down is not an option for me, I just need to travel on to wherever my paths may take me.
When I meet fellow travelers, we may have break, sit down for a while, share and compare what each of us has in our individual packages, teach each other, learn from each other, maybe even walk a few miles together, perhaps even discuss the quality and direction of certain roads or highways, but then each of us moves on to follow our individual personal paths.
Meeting fellow travelers and sharing and comparing your package with theirs, is kinda essential.
„Wow, you traveled that road for 30 years and THESE are all the „valuables“ you've found worthy to keep? Well, I've found some similar stuff on my ways, even picked some snippets up and carried 'em around for a while to investigate 'em, but in the end I found that they were just unnecessary ballast - not useful enough to justify their weight, so I just tossed 'em. Since my package is so much lighter and easier to handle now, traveling is much more fun for me, I tellya.“
Now, before I end this (possibly a bit self-centered) piece of pseudo-philosophical drivel, a word of advice for any fellow traveler who may read this: „Keep an eye on your direction and avoid going in circles.“
,
MrN