Happy Veterans Day

Reflections of a former toddler war refugee on Veterans Day.

Today, I consciously appreciate those who have served and are serving in military roles, including their families and loved ones.

Having once been a toddler war refugee, I have been grappling my entire life to reconcile where I am in the world with where I was, where I might have been, how I arrived here, and it is all inextricably intertwined with operations that were run by, and that created, veterans (including my own father).

The bear I stuffed during a recent lunch hour as part of a volunteer project for Operation Gratitude, sponsored by my employer.

That personal history led me to my college major - Political Science, with a focus on International Politics in the developing world - to study why we have military campaigns, and the promises of, and limits upon, diplomacy and state building. And, of course, it's all very complicated.

An underpinning of how I live my life today - why I was carrying my groceries in the late 90s in the sturdy bags that homeless people used to carry their possessions, and that the poor used in place of luggage,  eschewing plastic bags a decade before reusable bags were widely available - is trying to avoid the need for our country to enter into conflicts over resources. Sometimes it echoes of an isolationist approach, but it's not. The flipside of being once a toddler war refugee is being an international child, a kid who always knew there was a whole other world out there, with all its delights, to be engaged with.

So it's complicated, right? I don't want us to fight; I would love for there to be no more veterans. But then, there are the situations where I throw my hands up and yell at the newscaster, "Why aren't we DOING something?!" And I know that the doing part, even when it's diplomacy, requires more than talk, and the "we" isn't me, it's our veterans.

Instructions for stuffing the bear. Hopefully hugs transfer from the stuffer to the bear recipient.

So, Happy Veterans Day, and thank you.

Maybe it's just window dressing on corporate greed, maybe it does nothing to balance out my cosmic karma, but I love these types of projects, and I appreciate my employer for sponsoring them.