As a young child growing up a few years after the Second World War I had to face the suffocating result, strangely named the Cold War; there was sadness, enmity and mutual suspicion, East versus West, freedom versus oppression, but also plenty of optimism that one day we would overcome all that. We, mostly, where eagerly looking forward to the day when hate would be consigned to the bin of history and all people could bask in the warmth of freedom.
The ultimate symbol of the oppressiveness of that era, the Berlin Wall, came down amid loud cheering from the assembled crowds on the 9th of November 1989; or bits of the wall came down that day, with lots more in the days and months following. I remember watching the events on television at home in London and feeling blessed to see this, freedom overcoming oppression, light defeating darkness. Hearing the song 'Wind of Change' still brings a tear to my eye, especially the verse "where the children of tomorrow dream away in the wind of change", because I lived some of that sentiment even if, by then, I was no longer a child.
Some of the tears in the last twenty years have been shed for how we have betrayed those children of tomorrow, how most of the love overflowing that day dried up and became cynicism, how nationalism and materialism overcame all fraternal sentiment. But sad as all that has been, nothing can equal the sadness of what is currently becoming the new status quo, with Russia and its 'charismatic' leader initiating and executing its appalling invasion of Ukraine based of excuses that make the Iraq invasion look like the best documented, thus justified, military intervention in history after the Trojan War. We have regressed to something from the Cold War era, with a dash of WW2 thrown in for good measure.
Death is not reversible, with loads of bodies adorning our tv screens daily, Ukrainian civilians in shocking numbers but numerous young Russian soldiers also. All these people are dead, irreversibly, for reasons I am unable to fathom. Of course loads of theories abound, none of which to my mind adequately justifies the death and destruction. There is no rewind button, no glory, just pointless brutality and many dead bodies.
It may be that we human beings are unable to live together in harmony for long periods of time, that sooner or later we cherish our neighbour's possessions or feel we need to display our superior strength to anyone convenient. It is sobering thought, even more so for the younger generations whose life stretches ahead of them, tantalisingly promising. For older creatures such as myself the dreadful realisation dawns that our life, which not that long ago was full of optimism for humankind, will fizzle out in the sour miasma of bitter disappointment.
Let's hope at least that we won't see World War Three.
