There were so many preparations. I meditated in the morning to keep my center. I applied a sense of Zen like war paint. My smile was my machine gun, my resolve was my tank, and an encouraging attitude definitely won the hearts and minds.
For so long I took the enemy as my enemy, and I called it so. I vowed a vengeance so deep I couldn’t get around it. Only after going to battle did I figure it out: this isn’t my enemy at all. It isn’t my fight and I don’t want to fight. Like any war and like any soldier, I didn’t start the war and yet I felt the pride of it as if it was my battle to fight. I try hard not to grow resentful to the masters of war, pinning my pain on them.
But now I go back to the battle field in a stop gap. I was drafted, and I am not one to stand down from a challenge. So I don my fatigues, and I run among my fellow soldiers. I still feel their brotherhood and I would do anything to protect them.
