War And Avoidance

It's considered normal, even commendable, to spend life immersed in our fights. We allow ourselves to believe that our causes are just and honorable, even necessary. But, the truth—more often than not—seems to be that our fights are asinine and futile. The true goal of the fight is lost to the fury, and life becomes the fight itself—a perpetual, self-fulfilling act of struggle for the ultimate purpose of evading the self. We are not forced to answer for ourselves, or think beyond our immediate environment, when our minds are immersed in warfare. Our overt escapism is effectively cloaked by the fabricated, zealous righteousness of our struggle.

Perhaps this is why our hands grip our guns so tightly, why we yell so loudly, take such great offense, and look out from ourselves with such dogged intensity. To surrender our fights would leave us quiet with ourselves, with our own thoughts, with our own accountability to our selves and our experience.

It is more comfortable to die a loud and bloody death at the hands of our proclaimed enemies than it is to seek a life of peace with a foreign and conflicted self.

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(Brian F. Johnson, MARQUEE MAGAZINE )