|
Maybe you've seen the picture. A three year old Syrian boy washed up on a Turkish beach.
Running desperately from war. Seventeen people in an overtaxed dinghy swallowed up by the sea.
In the picture most of the boy's face is obscured. Seems appropriate; after all, this could be anyone's child.
He has a red shirt, blue shorts, sneakers...just like any three year old.
Only there he was. Laying on his front, gentle waves spreading underneath and around him tickling his slick wet hair. Granules of sand glistening off his arms, eyes shut, body perfectly and forever still.
And I wonder.
I wonder what that little boy's last moments were like. One second upon the sea shoulder to shoulder huddled with the frantic. The next second in the sea, now alone, and more frantic still.
I wonder what he thought of, or do three year olds think in those moments? As he gasped for air, bobbing and flailing in the surf, kicking and desperately trying to find a place for his feet, I wonder if he found enough air to call for his mom.
It wouldn't have mattered. His mom couldn't help. She was dying too.
There is a picture of this little boy from happier days standing on a couch with his older brother's arm around his shoulder. Smiles brimming. Anyone's kids.
And then in the salty sea, I wonder if his eyes dashed around at all in his final panicked heaves, searching for that big brother's arm. His brother, though, all of five, was also drowning that day.
Or maybe three year olds don't think that specifically. Maybe he just reacted. Maybe all of his innate human emotions and self-preservation simply kicked in as he fought the unfightable. Maybe, as he slurped in his last breath, maybe he thought of nothing and his entire little brain threw all of its energy at survival.
I don't know. I can't know.
And I can't take my eyes off of that picture...
As far as we know we all have just one life. Unless reincarnationists are right.
Of course, almost all religions offer the hope of an afterlife. It could be true. But if we believe it it's not because we know, it's because we believe it. It requires faith, a belief in something not provable.
No human has ever been able to peer beyond the vale. All we know is that we have this one life.
One life. One.
What I'm going to say here is utterly ridiculous. It's ridiculous because I realize that people have been killing each other since well before Cain and Abel:
I simply cannot get my head around what must be the sociopathic arrogance that makes one person feel somehow justified and at ease with taking another person's one life.
But it happens all the time. Every day, every minute, every second it's happening. All over the world. Even as I'm writing this.
It's just mind boggling, mind numbing really, to me.
With that I don't know what further there is to say. How do I end this sad soliloquy without trite? Too, how to end this so that it has any meaning.
Maybe just this: value, value, value people.
Value people.
Value them.
They have only one life too, after all.
If you want to see the picture I'm referring to then go here: http://zeenews.india.com/news/world/syrian-boy-3-lying-dead-on-turkish-beach-humanity-washed-ashore_1666530.html
| 
