November 11, 2003
Well, There's Freedom to Remember
This Remembrance Day will be unlike any I've ever experienced. I'll be looking at it through new eyes courtesy of traveling. Freedom. In my twenty three years of existence I've taken it for granted...
Sun streaming through window. Train's clacking down the tracks speeding toward the Swiss Alps. I gaze through the window, scenery a blur of autumn coloured mountainscape. Just after a pristine creek whizes by I look up. Twenty feet up the traincar three Swiss soldiers slide open the doors connecting the cabin ahead.
I look down at my belt and adjust my jacket for slack. Thoughts of getting my passport from the money-pouch around my waist in order to show the soldier overtake the chorus of Ants Marching being sung thru my headphones by Dave.
And then I look at it. This small booklet of paper that, because I am a citizen of Canada, I am entitled to. A small booklet that represents my government's job at drafting diplomatic agreements with other nations. These diplomatic agreements all of the sudden transfoming from this abstract notion in my head to something very real I hold in my hands. The soldier's gun is real.
I am deep in the heart of a land foreign to me. But I gain implicit trust of the local law enforcement by merely having this document. This piece of paper...
Then I realized freedom. I realized what it is that was worth fighting for. These documents that allow me to wander the globe, these documents that allow me to enter a Swiss library without causing a second glance, to grab any book off the shelf and read. I move freely, effortlessly though this society, why?
Freedom to travel is one very small luxury. But I am thankful that I have it. And today I will Remember. The weird thing is, like all my age, I didn't feel like I could relate to reality of WWI, WWII, etc. It's history to me. It's only the way things are now that matter. (Of course, in my mind I wanted to truely appreciate it, but its hard to know where to begin).
That's where I always got it wrong. I tried to imagine what it would be like going to battle in trenches, or storm the beaches of Normandy — to try and imagine the fear, or pain that these soldiers went through and then take that image of hurt, experience it for myself, and pay tribute and respect to the feeling I imagine they went through.
Needless to say, it never really made for a real experience for me. This has. Today I will think of the feeling of freedom I had as I walked into that library in Interlaken Switzerland, picked that book off the shelf, looked at it, and put it back without knowing what it was about because it was written in German. I smile to myself with a newfound appreciation and level of respect for the many men and women I never met who were willing to trade their lives so that I, living in the year 2003 right now, could have the opportunity to experience the freedom for myself of looking at that book. Even if I didn't understand it.
Posted by grant at 04:38 AM| Comments (3)
