5:06 Sunday

The Husband is snoring softly next to me in Bed Sweet Bed. We've had one of those lazy Sundays that refill your soul and make you feel up to tackling the rest of your life. He's been rereading the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O'Brien...I'm rereading Bleak House, but then I decided to re-watch Band of Brothers.

I was watching the taking of Carantan and thinking about the cost of war. Not the dollars and cents. I think we all know that. Not even the human cost, we know. We know the fathers and sons and husbands. What we can't measure is how war changes us fundamentally as human beings. What I fear is that as a people we are becoming hardened. On the inside. That those qualities that make us feel connected to all other human beings regardless of race, religion, language or what have you are being eroded. Those parts that make us mourn with those that mourn because they too are human, and one day we too will mourn. Those parts that grieve loss because we too have lost. I worry that we care less and less about the violence and suffering done to others in the name of ideology...or what ever cause you want to name.

The problem is, of course, how to we turn this back? How can we undo the damage that has been done but cannot be measured? How do we return to that ineffable human characteristic that connects us with all other human beings? How can we at least stop the erosion taking place?

One of the reasons I keep watching Band of Brothers is Captain Winters...in his interviews he talks about this...the ineffable parts that make us human. He is quiet and kind and wise and I wish that I could sit down and ask him these questions. I fear he wouldn't have a concrete answer. What I fear most is that there is no answer.