Women and children may go

I’ve spent the last two years immersed, for a large part, in the world of babies and the world of parenting. A world where concerns are shared, and deeply felt, by parents looking to do everything in their power right by their children. Wanting to look after them, to nourish them, to keep them healthy, safe and happy.

Parents that I know are from all around the world and all walks of life. But there are few to no barriers in communication when it comes to the root of what we care about. The expressions might be different but the desire is the same at its heart. We want to keep our children well. In the earliest days the want is nothing short of obsession for how to keep these little people alive.

Being a parent, and becoming a carer of people, has given me a lot of lessons in tolerance. Babies and children don’t act on cue according to the imagined scheduling of their parents, because they have their own wants and needs. And the tolerance learned from being a parent extends to others around, because we all have our own wants and needs. So at what point is it that people’s lives become dispensable?

It is unfathomable to me, that this world that I live in, in which I see people with the same concerns and cares all around me, is the same world in which it is somehow acceptable for war to be declared, and the large scale destruction of human life instigated. You might say that it is not acceptable, that a huge majority is up in arms, yet the fact is that it is happening and I just can’t believe that it is allowed to happen in this same world.

I’ve read the articles and I’ve taken in the notes on the history. These things don’t help me to understand why anyone could want for this to happen. And they don’t help me to accept these actions as a move, albeit regrettable, as though part of some elaborate game. Russia has been banned from some football, some olympics, are you fucking joking me? Life is not a game.