UKRAINE, MARCH, 2022

 

For whatever it´s worth, I feel compelled today to express my chagrin and sadness at what a European country, Ukraine, is going through. A senseless invasion that is showing the dark side of human nature because, believe it or not, the invaders are human beings, not aliens from another planet, who are inflicting harm and loss of life upon a civilian population. I have often said that I am naïve, and I thought Europeans were above inflicting such horrors upon one another, as they have done in the past, for centuries. 

I am appalled and feel diminished, and I can only quote, as I have done so many times, John Donne: 

No man is an island entire of itself; every man 
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; 
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe 
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as 
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine 
own were; any man's death diminishes me, 
because I am involved in mankind. 
And therefore never send to know for whom 
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. 

The bells are tolling for Europe.