The mightiest figures in a history book are mostly absent in the book. Yes, we read about revolutionaries and ministers who worked for the nation’s welfare but chances are that they wanted to be leaders. The leader wanted to be the one leading men on a good path. This defined who they were. This is who they wanted to be. They knew they wanted to be warriors, fighters, soldiers and the military pride of their nation.
In my book, my nameless, non-existent book, it was the men who craved art and breathed literature and yet made the hard, conscious decision to discard what their hearts longed for and joined the armed forces for people who will never know his name, sacrificed more.
He did not want to be a fighter, he did not want a gun. He wanted a paintbrush and colours from the Earth. He wanted the rain and a lover to frolic with him. Cicero once said, “we must decide who and what manner of men we wish to be and what calling in life we would follow; and this is the most difficult problem in the world.”
I wonder if it is harder to have the answer to this question and yet abandon it completely because a selfish, powerful stranger started a war and he must discard who he is only to fight; knowing that he has just one life and that too for a very short while. He does not want to step into the battlefield. He wants to run into a deep forest where the war has not penetrated yet and live alone and remain true to his soul. While wars will die like wars always do and he will have lived a life only he could, in solace, in sketches, in waterfalls and creeks.
Yet he put his pages down and picked a gun or a sword knowing he could not fulfil his heart but will fulfil his duty to the nation. Everyone else will be proud or maybe not. Maybe it was because everyone thought that he was a coward if he did not storm into war. Sit back and question what kind of life we have created that we need to fight fellow men and we do not have a choice. They will not remember his name because he was not important enough. Maybe his death would be by a bomb bursting in his lap leaving nothing but a scattered burnt unidentifiable carcass.
He may shed the last tear in defeat as he lies bleeding on nameless soil not knowing if it even made a difference and the soundless deafening cry for a life he could not have, echoed in silence among the spirits that he would soon reside with.
Maybe the bomb would not even grant him this.
Who was he? We do not know. Maybe we would if men…if humanity…if evolution? I do not know. I do not know what stops wars from happening. I know life ends because of it.