Tonight I came home from trick or treating and zoned out a bit. I sat on the couch and grabbed the remote. I was looking for a few minutes of relaxation while my wife put the kid down for the night, a chance to detune after a night of chaos trick-or-treating the streets of Olympia with a bazillion screaming goblins and ghouls. I flipped the tv on and there was one of those PBS specials on, the ones I never watch and usually skip over. But this one was on the Vietnam war, and well I chose to give it a watch.
It was graphic, and a horror show I wasn’t really expecting this Halloween. But it was what the tv gods put there for me to soak in. It went hand in hand with this weeks reading and the movie we watched in class today. But this was all the things I had never really paid much attention to growing up, politics, war, the past. They teach us some stuff about wars in high school, but I wasn’t interested in anything that wasn’t gas powered or of the opposite sex in high school. I never really gave the struggles of other people the time of day growing up. I was so concerned with my own struggles and trying to fit in this world, I didn’t really have the mind compacity to even care honestly. I was blissfully ignorant, but now I want to know more.
Each week we are read about the struggles the people around the world went through along the way. And fuck, I’ve had it easy compared to some. I used to think having a short arm and parents who got divorced was a tough life. That being raised on the south side of town, where I was the only white kid was rough. But I’ve never been in war, I’ve never been ripped from a place that I called home, and I’ve rarely had to deal with racism as a”white kid”.
Watching this PBS program was deep, and it put into perspective the hell the Vietnamese had to go through. I still have no clue the political side of the war, but the chaos and destruction I watched tonight was mind boggling. I knew some of the history lessons, but those don’t hold a candle to seeing the horror from the view of someone who was there. The absolute hell war did to these beautiful people and the place they called home. The backwards politics that went on and the death that came from it, fuck. Our political shit show is nothing compared to the hell these people went through, and many of them are still going through.
These books we are reading are opening my eyes to a whole other side of the world that I have turned a blind eye to. I think I was scared of what I might see, so I just put it out of my head. It’s baffling to me why there is so much hate in the world. I wish I would have been more interested in learning as a kid, but all I can do now is continue educate myself. Continue to be a good guy to everyone. To raise a son, who has a pure heart to love and except all people from all walks of life. To hope that one day, we can all walk this earth equally and freely, I know it’s a stretch but we all have dreams.