Fight Test

If I were still in the business of being professionally glib, I’d say something today like, “Putin is not only mired in the Cold War, he’s still fighting World War I. He believes an empire is made up of territories and borders, that conquered lands and people are assets, not liabilities, and that he can bomb the world all the way back to the 1950s.”

And it would be utter bullshit, because like 99 percent of the world, I have no real idea what’s happening in Ukraine, and nobody can say what’s going to happen. All I know for certain is that a lot of people are going to die for no good reason, and a lot of people here are going to treat it as entertainment. The closest most of us are going to get to the tragedy is on our screens.

It’s a good day for shutting up. History teaches us a lot of lessons. The problem is, we only learn them after the test is over.

I’ve been quieter in the past couple years, despite the fact that writing is my job, and despite the fact that being wrong about everything does not seem to have stopped other people from shouting their opinions from every platform.

I’m not against this, for what it’s worth. Shout away. It’s the only way we learn what we think, and find out how we’re wrong, which is the only way we get a little closer to being right.

One thing I can say with certainty, after years of writing stories: Conflict sells. We want our narratives to include fights and explosions because they are easy and exciting, and they throw the everyday business of being human into stark contrasts.

But I am trying to be more compassionate about the suffering of people I don’t know, especially when I don’t know what is happening in their lives. Especially when talking about a disease that has currently left a million people in America dead, or the cost it has incurred on the living. Or when I talk about kindergarteners being shelled so someone can make a larger political point.

Today I am thinking about five-year-olds, because I am a parent, and because one of the places that was hit in the hostilities between Ukraine and the Russian-backed separatists was a school called, of all things, “Fairytale Kindergarten.”

Imagine that for a second: a class full of children who are still trying to master tying their shoes being told they have to run and hide because there are people they’ve never met who are trying to kill them. Think of being one of the teachers suddenly burdened with that awful responsibility. Think of any five-year-old you know, happy and laughing or throwing a tantrum or just playing in the corner with their toys — and then, in a moment, that kid’s world now includes the reality of bombs and shrapnel and death.

I am so lucky that I only have to imagine it. I am historically lucky that my children have never had to face it, while so many kids in this world do.

But I cannot imagine anyone, when actually faced with that reality, saying, “Yes, this suffering is good and necessary, and I would gladly litter the ground with these small bodies because I am right.”

That is flat-out insane. And we would rightly consider anyone who walked into that kindergarten with a bomb on a belt or an automatic rifle to be a monster. I have to believe that 99 percent of us would, if placed in that classroom, instantly recognize that nothing is worth killing children. There is no miracle that will come from that sacrifice.

This is how stories can be turned against us, and therefore we have to be careful about what we are sure we know. We only get people in glimpses, even if we get more glimpses than ever before. We see them in 140 characters or screenshots or 10-second video clips. It is so easy to turn them into points to be scored on a board, and excuse their deaths in the name of some larger, grander victory. We do that all the time.

And the people, like Putin, who start these wars are almost never the ones who pay for them. The kindergarteners and their families are the ones who pick up that check.

Our distance from the actual fight is a luxury. We get to turn it into a joke, or a talking point.

But I still feel obliged to say something, because that is how I get through these days. And because I believe we have to name what we love to make sure it survives. It is the same basic thing I have repeated to my kids over and over so I can learn it myself, the simplest possible recitation of fact: We have to use our words to say only what’s true and necessary, even when the temptation is to find all the ways we’re right and they’re evil. Especially when the bombs start dropping.

I still believe most people are doing the best they can, even if the proof of that is sometimes in short supply. I believe in kindness outlasting rage and compassion moving the world into a better direction, like waves slowly eroding the rocks on shore. I believe most of us, if we were in that kindergarten, would embrace those kids and shield them with our own bodies.

I could be wrong. But of all the hills to die on, this seems like the best one to me.