World War Two drew to a close on this day in 1945. The leaders of Japan laid down their arms and signed a piece of paper on the US battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Thsu the celebrations began across the globe, as people spilled out into the streets and hope throbbed in the quiet heart of mothers waiting for their offspring to return to their arms.
Sixty years later we are in awe of the heroics and selfless sacrifices made by 'so few for so many'. The war was not about economics we are told in our history books, it was in the cause of freedom and it does not take too many documentaries about the chilling vision of Hitler and his followers to doubt the cause.
Yet, what is this freedom that was sought so desperately, for which so much young hot blood has been spilt, if it is reduced to child like hoarding of possession, consumption, social approval and instant gratification?
What is free will if our habits, clothes, diets, morality, reason and opinion are shaped by the fashion of the hour? What is free will in a life where leisure, happiness and conversation are shaped out of the noisy lights that reflect off the pallid white sheet of the theater wall?
We catch a glimpse of moments of truth but not for long. The minute we dare to step out of our tedious consistency, we shun its consequence, as it is cloaked in confusion and it terrorizes the ‘I” out the dungeon of consolation, our personality.
The manifestation of the ruler has altered but not the means or conclusion. Our frail distraction is it’s effortless means and communal etiquette it' sleepy and seemingly inevitable culmination.
What is this peace and liberty that has been purchased so dearly?
Not a whit, we defy augury;
there’s a special providence
in the fall of a sparrow.
If it be now, ’tis not to come;
if it be not to come, it will be now;
if it be not now, yet it will come:
the readiness is all.
Since no man has aught of what he leaves,
what is ’t to leave betimes?
Let be.
Hamlet
(Act V, Scene ii)
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