The Gift

The Gift

   I have been watching (quite belatedly) the Steven Spielberg/Tom Hanks productions series, The Pacific, a sister film of sort to their earlier collaboration, Band of Brothers.  What is so moving about this 10-part series is the impact shown on both sides, the loss of life and the randomness of that decision.  Newly married, fresh out of school, worried parents, feeling immortal, none of it matters.  Leaders and underlings fall equally, as do hearts and minds.  At one point, seeing a trooper about to collapse mentally and admitting how scared he is, one leader tries to console him by simply saying, "we have to believe our cause is just."

   This is a common theme among so called leaders in recent centuries, using politics or religion or a grab for power to push forward the masses, for in reality very few "leaders" actually take the lead, a vast change from days of old when troops rallied behind kings and fighters who actually risked their own lives by "leading" the troops into battle (thus the origination of the term).  Today's "leaders" are usually quite old, hidden behind desks and a battalion of equally old guards, ready to run for cover at the slightest hint of a threat, so important are their decisions (or so they feel).  The job now is to protect the financial markets instead of the people, to seemingly grab resources instead of hearts.  Seen from space and perhaps from time, it all seems so silly in the end.

   What makes this particular series (at least to me) have such an impact is the portrayal of the preciousness of life itself.  Just cause or not, how valuable is one's life?  And is war, no matter what country or cause one is fighting for or against, worth it?  The taking of life, especially that of innocent life such as suicide bombers, is something few of us actually face, at least not on a daily basis.  Few of us wake up to an armed soldier outside our door or patrolling our street (vs. a police car rolling by).  And most of us can freely walk to the store or go on a hike in the hills or woods without fear of being kidnapped or shot and injured.  Our homes, for the most part, are intact, the repairs a few cracks in the stucco from settling instead of from a blast of 50-caliber rounds, our dogs walking freely instead of with a limp from shrapnel.

   Part of this is simply because there seems to always be war somewhere, one side or the other feeling that their cause is "just" and warrants the patrols or the buried mines, regardless of the cost of life.  And in the series, one can see (especially if one has never actually been in a real war where life is continually at risk and toilet paper and water are seldom available, as is sleep) the sad reality sinking in, that this time one might really not be getting out of this alive.  At one point in the film, one soldier, after a firefight says, "I'll tell you, when I get home..." only to be interrupted by another who unemotionally says, "We're not going home."

   On a side note, my brother met with a worker years ago, a worker of Chinese descent and fluent in Mandarin.  When my brother asked about learning this form of Chinese (my brother was in his fifties at the time), his co-worker simply replied, "Too late."  Part of this is simply because many words in the language often have many levels (up to seven) of inflection; say the same word high or low and it means something entirely different.  As just one example I heard, the same word for mother (with a high tone) means goat (with a low tone).  But in the recent January issue of National Geographic, studies are showing that babies under a year old learn differences quickly.  In just 15 minutes the babies appeared to have absorbed what was correct. “Somehow they must have learned it, despite not comprehending the meaning of the sentences,” Friederici (Angela Friederici, a neuropsychologist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany) tells me. “At this point it’s not syntax. It’s phonologically encoded regularity.”

   It would appear, the article implies, that babies are learning from day one.  For my brother, "too late" at age fifty translated into babies understanding language differences in fifteen minutes.  Imagine teaching babies about not fighting, about love and caring and the expectation of so many wonderful things still to come.  Any parent already tries to do this, and it apparently is being absorbed.  So where does it go wrong?  At what point do we give in and decide to randomly take life away, to be convinced that doing so is okay because it is a "just" cause?

   The point of all this is perhaps now, as the holidays surround us, we should all look around...for some of us, the comforts are everywhere, from the families to the food on the table (no big deal, we say, we'll just go to the store and pick up what we need) to the warmth to the love.  And for others, some or perhaps all of those things are merely things that are hoped for, to go home, to be home, to wonder how we could have forgotten, to once again treasure life.

   And as we open presents or attend church or serve those in need, it might perhaps dawn on us that our greatest gift dwells inside us, a gift we often overlook, a gift some no longer have...that of life itself.



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