Nobody wins in a system of fences and walls

So many conflicts in the world. So much sorrow and pain. So much distrust. And then me, here, feeling the pain of the world, trying to be with it. Trying to embrace it and not rebell or submitt. Trying not to lash out in anger, or become quite to apathy and passivety.

We just saw a film called Lemon Tree. About a Palestinian women and her lemon tree garden who one day gets the Israeli defense minister as a neighbour. Fences are put up and security tightned. The women gets a fence between her and her trees, who start dying from lack of water and care.

The film touched me so much. And I was deeply moved when hearing how the trees were like people to them. The trees had a soul and had feelings. This was shared on both sides of the walls. Even then defense minister said that to his wife. But in his actions he did not reflect any empathy, compassion or understandning for the trees or the Palestinian women. Orders were orders, and security was security.

It pains me to hear people say things like ”i am just following orders” and ”that is not for me to think about” when somebody asks why they follow orders and do things that make life hard for others. For me it became clear that everybody living in such a system is a prisoner, nobody wins and everybody bears pain and suffers from what they are actively, sometime unconciousley taking part in.

How to free ourselves from this prison system? Is the true answer to live by the rule of nonviolence, free oneself from cooperating with unjust laws, rules, policies and regulations? To detach oneself from the heavy jackals of subscribing to such a idea and beleiving it to be true. Ideas like ”Us and them”, ”Terrorist and Freedom fighter”, ”Authority and following orders”. Everyone is trying to take care of their needs, and so in a system that makes it even more difficult to see solutions where everyones needs are met, it is understandable that people fear what they don’t beleive or know anything about.

So those who do know and do beleive in a different world, a different way of relating to one another can inspire those who do not beleive through their actions. Just like the few compassionate people living in Auschwitz, who walked around asking people who they were doing and shared with others their last peice of bread. They survived, because they had a meaning and opened their hearts to the gift of being able to contribute to life, even under the most horrific conditions. They did not lose their souls to any person, idea or system, but instead embraced the pain that was inherent in the system, took in on themselves to show how the system suffers and creates suffering from the very core of it’s nature.

That is true nonviolence. To give up ones life, but to keep on living within the hearts of many who also long to believe in the inherent goodness of human nature. Those who do harm, live on but not in the hearts of others, but in the minds of some, as people who have disgraced humanity and shed suffering over her potential to bloom and nourish all of life. We are all trying to create justice somehow, and thereafter chose our heros of inspiration. When we realize that revenge is the lazy mans way of greiving and mourning, and that every harmed relationship is to do harm to oneself.

I too pray and wish I had the courage to give my life to a higher cause. Maybe that is what I seek when I get so touched and moved from films like Lemon Tree. It’s as if my soul is telling me something it wants to do here on Earth, and it wants me to help it realize that by dedicating my life to the benefit of all, to the benefit of all of mankind, and especially to the future children who will soon walk these soils, of whom WE are the ones borrowing this planet.