Every year there seems to be fewer and fewer poppies around town.
People wear them on their bags, their hats, and on the right side of their jackets.
They don't seem to know (or care) that we wear them over our hearts for a reason.
Fewer people care to take a moment of silence, or to sit alone and contemplate the realities of war and freedom.
Every year we seem to take the lessons and sacrifices of the past for granted.
We feel that we deserve our freedoms and dreams, mainly because we've never been in a situation where these "given's" were threatened.
And let's be fair, the past two generations of the West have had no war to define them.
It's getting harder and harder to find veterans even from the Second World War. And if memroy serves me well, I think there's less than a dozen World War I veterans left in the whole of Canada.
So it's not surprising that we have no frame of reference here.
And personally, I find it frustrating to hear people talk in bold terms, such as, "I remember", "I appreciate all that was given for my generation", or "Life is precious; war is hell."
Just because we may take one day out of the year to reflect on all that we have and all that was lost, that doesn't mean we're not guilty of taking the other 364 days of the year for granted. We're all guilty of self-involvement.
Nobody can really claim that "they remember" something that they've never seen; noone can claim to be grateful for the great sacrifices of the past while they complain about the minor inconveniences of the modern West; and talking about war itself is something that should be reserved for people who know the realities of the world, not those who've seen a few too many war movies from the comfort of their homes.
All this talk almost makes you wanna join the army, doesn't it?
Then again, it makes me wanna take all the weapons in the world and hurl them into the sun. (Superman-style)
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