Somehow we survived the hardships of childhood, teen-hood and young adulthood. Well, maybe some of us are still waging war with young adulthood. Then you move on into middle-aged and old-hood. All along the way we face the hurdles and we leap as high as we can. Some we clear and others may trip us up, but when the hurdle is too high we find another way around. No matter where we are on the path, we don’t give up, we move on.
As a kid there are those family matters that may have gotten in our way. In school we thought the hurdles were confusing. As adults we saw the hurdles as puzzles to figure out, and most of the time the puzzle pieces eventually fit nicely together. Life is an adventure and a challenge but most of us would agree it’s worth fighting every damned hurdle. Every one we clear is a star in our life crown.
Then there’s the completely unexpected hurdle of this war and all that it entails. Our crown begins to dull as we see our name dragged through the blood and sand in Iraq. After all that we have overcome in our lives, we are faced with something that we seem unable to stop and unable to avoid its consequences. Damn! We went through all this life stuff running full speed and here’s a brick wall staring us in the face. There appears to be no way around this hurdle. Some are content to stand still at the base of the brick wall while others of us are determined to figure out how to take it down. All that damn effort we put into our lives to make ourselves better and to be better people is behind us, but now we have this, this war. People are being killed in our name and we don’t know how to make it stop. People are being tortured in our name and that’s hurting us too. We aren’t killers. We aren’t torturers. That’s not what we do, yet it was and is being done and it’s being done using our hard earned good name. All our efforts to become the people we always wanted to be are being nullified by the present administration. And hell yes, we’re mad.
No wonder we are angry and frustrated. We didn’t run this far or this fast to come to this. This is what we fought to avoid all our lives and now it’s been placed in front of us, forced on us, and this isn’t what we worked for at all. As you have tried all your life to succeed beyond all hurdles, make yourself a better person, help your fellow man and do what you believed to be right in life, you realize now that someone else is trying to undo all you have done. They have taken that good strong name you made for yourself and stamped all over it the actions and tragedies of a murderous war.
Some may be wondering now if it was all worth it? Was it worth the all the struggles of life just to come to this? Feelings of hopelessness and helplessness may be creeping up more each day, and that’s understandable. But we can’t allow those feelings to linger. Yes, this is a hurdle that we did not expect, but due to the other hurdles we have faced in the past we have become stronger and that strength will come to our aid now. Yeah, we didn’t expect something so awful to occur during our lifetime, but it has and none of us are going to give up our good name without a fight. It’s a different type of hurdle that we haven’t yet figured out how to overcome. We aren’t even sure that we can, but we know that we are absolutely the right people to try. We didn’t get this far in life, we didn’t work as hard as we have just to give up over this. No matter how dismal it may seem at times, no matter how ashamed, anguished and embarrassed we may be to see what is being done in our name, we’ll keep trying to make it stop. We aren’t people who kill and torture. We’re Americans and we know something about overcoming hurdles. We’ve been doing it all our life.
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