Tonight is the first night in a very long while that my boyfriend and I have slept apart. I notice I have time to read , watch the news, and look up things that interest me on the internet.
No wonder I've been feeling stupider lately. Every night, my boyfriend and I spend several hours watching TV. And very rarely do we watch a newscast. We watch shit.
My girlfriend sent an email recently that she feels, in essence, like her life is quite thoughtless and shallow. I agreed with her. I think her life is like that, but I think my life is a lot like that, too.
I've been trying to pay attention to the things going on between Israel and Lebanon right now. I met a ton of Israelis during my year in Asia. I like them and they like me. They can be arrogant, but they are so sincere (a trait that can be hard to find in Canada). I think about the soldiers taken hostage, their mothers, the fact that those boy soldiers could have been the Israeli boys I met while travelling. I shared a room with many Israelis, male and female. It hurts my heart to think of what's going on there. And I'm not pro-Israel at all. The Lebanese fear for their home, children, lives just as much.
It's interesting that I am not religious, and yet, Haifa, one of the the Israeli cities hit, has a Baha'i shrine. I haven't seen that shrine yet, but all my family has been. Again, I'm not religious, but I don't want that city to be destroyed, or the temple hit, because I know it's important to Baha'i's. It's the same feeling I had when the Taliban were bombing 2,000 year old Buddhist structures back in 2001. It's not a country or culture that is being attacked when religious monuments like that are hit; it's humanity's culture that is destroyed.
Man is so flawed, in some ways. And so incredible, in the same breath.
I'm typing this because I have no one to talk to about this. People around me don't think about this stuff, and I get weird looks when I feel a bit passionate. My social circle was more informed in Montreal. I miss that. But then again, I was at university.
