The JSW Challenge is open to anybody who wishes to participate. Using the writing prompt, write a flash fiction no longer than 500 words and post to your page. The Challenge starts on Monday and runs through Sunday each week. Please remember to link your story back to this post so everyone can read your entry.
“Even if you cannot change all the people around you, you can change the people you choose to be around. Life is too short to waste your time on people who don’t respect, appreciate, and value you. Spend your life with people who make you smile, laugh, and feel loved.”
― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
― Rumi
“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”
― Albert Einstein
“Don’t jump, Harold!”
Harold flipped red wings.
Spencer swung his way up, shooting out a sticky strand of web which wrapped around Harold.
“Oh, for creatures sake,” Harold said, attempting to flick his glued-down wings, “Spencer!”
The spider turned around. “What?”
“I wasn’t going to jump. I was going to fly!”
“Thank goodness, I saved you!”
“What? I have wings, Spencer. I’m a flying bug!”
“What? Oh…I forgot.”
He always forgot.
Spencer looked so ashamed, however, Harold relented – as always. “It’s all right. Just get this sticky web off me.”
“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky
BY ATHLING2001
“Dad, how do soldiers killing each other solve the world’s problems?”
― Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes: Sunday Pages 1985-1995
I was looking back through my blog today and ran across this quote. It stopped me in my tracks the first time and it did again today. The world is rife with War. Every day some conflict seems to break out somewhere in the world, ending with more innocent people killed or maimed, their lives and homes destroyed.
Are we thinking about War wrong? Might makes right. The winner writes the history. The strongest survives.
But, as Calvin wisely asked his Dad, how do soldiers killing each other solve the world’s problems?
How indeed? This is one of those questions parents dread. How do you explain war to a child whose innocence you wish to protect? Should we even explain this nasty business to a child or is this one of those times for ‘you’ll understand when you get older?’
Okay, so no, we shouldn’t terrorize children with the concept and reality of war. But if we don’t start teaching them better ways to solve the world’s problems, nothing is going to change.
Man is a violent species. We’re not so different from lions or wolves or alligators. We protect our species from any perceived threat, whether real or not. Every species protests its own, even rabbits. Mice. Maybe amoebas for all I know.
The reality, however, is that we no longer consider ourselves one species. Humans have gone off the scale. Male lions fight for dominion over the pride, but they don’t go killing every other male lion on the plain just because they are male.
Why do we go that extra mile to kill everything which gets in our way, doesn’t think our way, or lives, believes or looks differently. Why have we separated our species into the right and the wrong, the weak or the strong, the human or the non-human.
We’re at war with everything. Ourselves. Our neighbors. The others just across the boundary line. Pollution. Melting Icebergs. Who controls the wealth. Who goes hungry or homeless or without medical care.
How are soldiers killing each other solving these problems?
Truth is, they’re not. We’re not. We’re not solving the problems which matter. We are just creating more division, more dividing lines, more conflict.
War never ends war. Violence only begets more violence.
Turn that around and peace only begets peace. Living in harmony makes us one again; makes us whole.
Don’t get me wrong. I honor and respect those men and women who willing sacrifice their lives and limbs and days to protect baseball, mom and apple pie, but don’t be fooled. We are no different from the rest of the world. We’ve separated our selves into the American species and might does make right.
How are those soldiers dying and suffering for us solving the world’s problems?
We try, of course we do, but one narrow opening for peace doesn’t defeat war.
War will only be defeated when we, all of us in every town and house and country, rich or poor, homeless or living in a huge mansion, stand together and say ‘Enough.’ When collectively we say nobody should have to fight or die because of our differences.
When we declare we will no longer fight. We will honor our species – every single member of our species – with the basic needs of life. Food. Water. Shelter.
How are soldiers killing each other solving the problems of food, water and shelter?
I am an American and I love my country. I don’t know anything about being Chinese or Russian or French. But you are all my species. These difference don’t make us different. They make us human.
So, next time your neighbor pisses you off, somebody cuts you off in traffic or breaks in front of you in line, ask yourself, “How do soldiers killing each other solve the world’s problems?”
It starts here.
Let’s make history.
Do you think aliens exist?
It depends on how you define aliens. Merriam-Webster says:
1a: belonging or relating to another person, place, or thing : STRANGE an alien environment
b: relating, belonging, or owing allegiance to another country or government : FOREIGN alien residents
c: EXOTIC sense 1 alien plants
d: coming from another world : EXTRATERRESTRIAL alien beings an alien spaceship When it comes to knowing what alien life forms might be like, we don’t have any idea.— Kate Shuster
2: differing in nature or character typically to the point of incompatibility ideas alien to democracy
We all know, don’t we, that in this sense we are talking about beings from another world. Really, however, all the definitions above could pertain to extraterrestrial life. But why do we have to go extraterrestrial? We are looking to the stars when we should be looking around us at all the ‘alien’ – ‘differing in nature or character typically to the point of incompatibility’- life around us.
Think of the octopus. It is one of the most intelligent forms of life and yet how alien is the little guy? The Blue Whale? Or the Dragon Fish which lives in the deepest depths of the ocean? How about Poison Dart Frogs? Or the jellyfish?
Even closer to home there are spider monkeys and gorillas. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
Sure monkeys and lions aren’t considered alien, but then again, if they were on another planet and we’d never seen them before….. alien. Isn’t it just what we don’t consider to be like ourselves that we consider alien? If we saw lions on another planet, they would still be lions, but if we saw an octopi, what then? Would we wonder how long aliens had been living unknown on our own planet?
If this doesn’t convenience you, think of all the insects in the world. Many of them look alien to the core. I think we have enough aliens living here among us that we don’t need to look at to the stars.
The JSW Challenge is open to anybody who wishes to participate. Using the writing prompt, write a flash fiction no longer than 500 words and post to your page. The Challenge starts on Monday and runs through Sunday each week. Please remember to link your story back to this post so everyone can read your entry.
A Writer's Life 
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