Dear People of Earth,
Hello.
I'm sure someone else has written something like this, and undoubtedly they did it better than I'm about to (eloquence not being my strong suit), but here I go anyway. I have a point to make, and in so many words it's this: War is ridiculous. I know, it's a point that's been made before but I have to chime in… it's in my nature.
I firmly believe that foreign relations go sour between governments, not people. Problems crop up, squabbles between governments get out of hand, and then in order to convince people that they need to go and fight to the death (no small matter of convincing!), we have to be taught to hate each other.
I'm sure someone else has written something like this, and undoubtedly they did it better than I'm about to (eloquence not being my strong suit), but here I go anyway. I have a point to make, and in so many words it's this: War is ridiculous. I know, it's a point that's been made before but I have to chime in… it's in my nature.
I firmly believe that foreign relations go sour between governments, not people. Problems crop up, squabbles between governments get out of hand, and then in order to convince people that they need to go and fight to the death (no small matter of convincing!), we have to be taught to hate each other.
It’s horrible for a thousand reasons, but the one that stands out the most to me is that most people are just regular people, trying to get by in the world. There’s literally no reason to hate the majority of people. For every angry militant there are ten thousand regular folks, trying to take care of our families, experience as much joy peace and love as we can, and try to have a better life and future for our children.
People get manipulated into fighting and hating each other. For the bigger part of it, any bad thing that I think I know about some group of people on the other side of the world is what I've been told, not what I've experienced. I've been fortunate enough to have my feet on the ground in a lot of countries. I’ve been able to shake hands with a lot of different people, sit in their homes, enjoy their food and engage in real conversations over games of chess.
People get manipulated into fighting and hating each other. For the bigger part of it, any bad thing that I think I know about some group of people on the other side of the world is what I've been told, not what I've experienced. I've been fortunate enough to have my feet on the ground in a lot of countries. I’ve been able to shake hands with a lot of different people, sit in their homes, enjoy their food and engage in real conversations over games of chess.
I’ve found no reason to hate any of them.
That's what I hope to bring to the table today, as I write this. I want to share my little bit of experience in the world, and try to shed some light on my perspective so that maybe (hopefully!) when it hits the internet there will be somebody; maybe just one guy, somewhere out there who reads it and concludes that there's no reason to hate me, or to hate the people of my country any more than I hate the people of his.
Maybe it'll go viral and change the world. That would be great! Here goes.
My name is Zach and I'm an American. I’m happily married to a wonderful woman, and I have a two year old daughter of whom I am very proud and sentimental. Here's a picture.
My name is Zach and I'm an American. I’m happily married to a wonderful woman, and I have a two year old daughter of whom I am very proud and sentimental. Here's a picture.
I was born here in the USA, in a very small town tucked away in the hills of Vermont. I have three sisters and we're all grown. We're a working class family. Growing up we didn't have a lot of money, but to a kid with no other frame of reference it took me a lot of years to realize it. My parents are hard working, intelligent and honest people, who raised us to value the importance of family, of education and of human decency. We were rich in that way.
Vermont is a beautiful place; the mountains are old and rounded rather than sharp and craggy, and they are covered almost entirely with forests. My father inherited some land from my great grandmother when she passed away. It had a one room hunting camp on it, which is where he and my mother made their start. He built our house from the ground up, expanding it as our family grew. I remember the many stages of construction, and always the surrounding natural beauty of the land and the forests.
A year before I finished high school I had an opportunity to participate in a student exchange program called "Project Harmony". A group of students from my town and a neighboring town flew to Russia and lived with families in Petraslovodsk, which is a beautiful city near the border of Finland. It was the first time I'd ever been on an airplane, let alone visited another country. We toured St. Petersburg first, then took a train to Petraslovodsk where we went to school and spoke Russian (to an extent) for a couple of months, then took another train to Moscow for a few days and headed home. The next fall the kids from the families we stayed with came to America and stayed with our families for a while.
Though I had been previously aware of the fact that the world is very big and filled with people, it was really something to be suddenly immersed in a place with a different language and different customs, with an entirely different history, vast and rich and amazingly old. What really got my attention though was the fact that at the end of the day, sitting around the kitchen table with the Kolodin family, it was every bit the familiar family dynamic that I knew and loved.
Vermont is a beautiful place; the mountains are old and rounded rather than sharp and craggy, and they are covered almost entirely with forests. My father inherited some land from my great grandmother when she passed away. It had a one room hunting camp on it, which is where he and my mother made their start. He built our house from the ground up, expanding it as our family grew. I remember the many stages of construction, and always the surrounding natural beauty of the land and the forests.
A year before I finished high school I had an opportunity to participate in a student exchange program called "Project Harmony". A group of students from my town and a neighboring town flew to Russia and lived with families in Petraslovodsk, which is a beautiful city near the border of Finland. It was the first time I'd ever been on an airplane, let alone visited another country. We toured St. Petersburg first, then took a train to Petraslovodsk where we went to school and spoke Russian (to an extent) for a couple of months, then took another train to Moscow for a few days and headed home. The next fall the kids from the families we stayed with came to America and stayed with our families for a while.
Though I had been previously aware of the fact that the world is very big and filled with people, it was really something to be suddenly immersed in a place with a different language and different customs, with an entirely different history, vast and rich and amazingly old. What really got my attention though was the fact that at the end of the day, sitting around the kitchen table with the Kolodin family, it was every bit the familiar family dynamic that I knew and loved.
Their family was just like my family. Mr. and Mrs. Kolodin worked hard to raise good kids, taught them to be good people and prepared them for the world just like my parents did. Anton was a teenage kid like me, and barring the languages we spoke we were not so different at all. It seems obvious now to think about it that way, but sometimes it takes an epiphany moment for something so obvious to really click. That was 16 years ago.
When it came time for me to leave the nest I joined the Air Force. Like a lot of boys I thought flying fighter jets was the ultimate cool thing to do, but that wasn't in the cards (I’m too tall!) so instead I got into an electronics career field maintaining air traffic control radar systems. It allowed me to at least be around the aircraft and to be a part of that world.
For a kid from the woods in Vermont, the Air Force was an amazing opportunity to expand my frame of reference. My trip to Russia was just the beginning of that awareness; suddenly I was surrounded by people from every corner of the country and the US is a pretty big and diverse place! It opened my eyes in a lot of ways. One of the first things I realized was that my parents had done a good job preparing me for the world. I hope I can do as well for my daughter. It seemed like there were a lot of people around who were having a much tougher time of it than I was. Just getting along with other people is a bigger problem for some than for others.
Racism surprised me. Unfortunately it exists here in the US still. I grew up in an almost exclusively white community, but it wasn't a racist community at all, so when I first experienced real racism it really blew my mind. "How can anyone hate someone they don't even know?" I wondered, and I continue to wonder. I knew that there was such a thing as racism, about segregation and hate crimes and the like, but it had always been something that existed far away, in another time.
When it came time for me to leave the nest I joined the Air Force. Like a lot of boys I thought flying fighter jets was the ultimate cool thing to do, but that wasn't in the cards (I’m too tall!) so instead I got into an electronics career field maintaining air traffic control radar systems. It allowed me to at least be around the aircraft and to be a part of that world.
For a kid from the woods in Vermont, the Air Force was an amazing opportunity to expand my frame of reference. My trip to Russia was just the beginning of that awareness; suddenly I was surrounded by people from every corner of the country and the US is a pretty big and diverse place! It opened my eyes in a lot of ways. One of the first things I realized was that my parents had done a good job preparing me for the world. I hope I can do as well for my daughter. It seemed like there were a lot of people around who were having a much tougher time of it than I was. Just getting along with other people is a bigger problem for some than for others.
Racism surprised me. Unfortunately it exists here in the US still. I grew up in an almost exclusively white community, but it wasn't a racist community at all, so when I first experienced real racism it really blew my mind. "How can anyone hate someone they don't even know?" I wondered, and I continue to wonder. I knew that there was such a thing as racism, about segregation and hate crimes and the like, but it had always been something that existed far away, in another time.
When I actually saw it; when I heard derogatory and blatantly racist comments used in normal conversations like it wasn't a big deal, it really bothered me to realize that racism is alive and well. It has been my experience that people who aren't particularly racist think very poorly of those who are. I do. I think most of us do. Like in any other basket of apples, there are likely to be some rotten ones.
I don't like to see anyone suffer. I am not... warlike... nor am I easy to incite into a warlike frame of mind. I'm not a pacifist either; I understand the need for a military given the unfortunate tendency of human beings to act unkindly towards one another.
Fortunately I never had to experience combat, and my heart goes out to anyone who has. Violence changes people. I was in places where combat was going on, but I was never required to be involved in it. My job was to help air traffic controllers protect the pilots who were out there doing whatever it is that they do. Most importantly, I got to go to some amazing places, and one thing that was true everywhere is that there are good and peaceful people in every corner of the globe.
Someday I hope I'll finally sit down and write in great detail on each place, and talk more about the wonderful people I've met, but just to get the list out there to help establish my frame of reference, here's where I've been at this point in my life: The US (every state), Canada, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Bosnia, Hungary, South Korea, Okinawa, Japan, Germany, Luxembourg, France, England, Crete, Iraq, Dubai, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait.
There are so many more places that I want to go, and hopefully will go before I die. Some places I visited longer than others, some only a week or two, some for a month or two, some for a year or two. Each place is unique, but in every place I found at least one commonality: There are thousands and thousands of good honest people, working and playing, raising kids and just doing their best to build a better life for themselves and their families.
In every country I met people who welcomed me and were eager to share their lives and their stories. In every culture people spend their time worrying about the day to day stuff; learning trade skills or figuring out what’s for dinner. Men worry about meeting women, and women fret about meeting men. Everyone laughs at the antics of children and everyone hurts when loved ones pass on.
We all experience joy and sadness. It’s our collective job to spread the joy and mitigate the sadness as best we can.
It’s our job to look at one another through our own eyes and not through the eyes of ignorance and agenda driven hatred. It’s up to each of us to filter the information we’re fed and to pick out and throw away the rotten bits so that at the end of the day we can be closer to peace than we were when we woke.
At this point the military chapter of my life has been over for a few years, and I have my time in the Air Force to thank for most of my travels and for helping me develop my perspective on the world. I still hear people saying ignorant things about the people of this nation or that nation. Sometimes people say bad things about Americans, and sometimes we say bad things back. It’s ridiculous. There are literally billions of human beings living on this planet right now, even as I type. 6.8 billion or so, as I'm given to understand. They’re trying to get through life. That’s all I’m doing too. My wife still serves in the Air Force. She doesn’t hate, or want to hurt anybody either, it’s not in her nature.
I’m just one 32 year old American man, but I believe I speak for a huge number of people when I say: “Please don’t hate me, just for being born where I was born. I don’t hate you. We’re not so different, you and I.”
Sincerely,Zach
