A bicycle and a Bus Ticket

I confess I'm feeling discouraged today. I expected some days like this, and the truth is there haven't been many. But the novelty of going car free is wearing off. I'm feeling how much work this is, and how far I have to go to fulfill my vow for a whole year. There are definite costs. My wife just left for a trip to visit her family on the East Coast, and it's hard for both of us that I can't go with her. It's 30 degrees outside and dark, as I prepare to take on global warming again today with a bicycle and a bus ticket, beating my way into the city to do my work at the Veteran's Hospital. 

Last night I went to a showing of the movie Ground Truth at the Whidbey Institute, about returning Iraq war veterans and their shattered lives. Two young vets from island families were there to talk about their experiences. One of the young men is from a family I know, whose parents have suffered hugely through this ordeal with him. We're coming up on the fifth year anniversary of a fruitless and completely disastrous war, and I felt again last night the impotent rage I felt during the build up to this war, when I realized that President Bush was just stupid and reckless enough to do it. 

How does one make sense of such senseless suffering? These young men may never know the luxury of peace of mind, and their distress will weigh on our country and our conscience for many years to come. What will we be able to give them? What can I do, for that matter, for the Viet Nam vets in my stress reduction class at the VA who are still holding their lives together all these years later by the barest of threads, whose only hope is to learn to live a little bit better with the pain they are carrying for all the rest of us who didn't have to go through the horrors of that needless war.

There may never be any answers to these questions. But today I am sure feeling the weight of them.