Perspective

I’ve never gone hungry, involuntarily.

I’ve never left my homeland, involuntarily.

I’ve never sent my family across a border to live off the kindness of strangers in a foreign land, while I stayed to fight against an enemy’s overwhelming military force — including their possible deployment of weapons of mass destruction that would wipe all of my friends, neighbors and fellow defenders of freedom on the front lines off the face of this Earth.

I’ve never given my kid to a complete stranger and blindly trusted her to deliver my loved one to her mother in a foreign land.

I’ve never been in a mob of people crowded onto a train platform hoping to escape the vicious brutality of the enemy tanks that are coming to pummel my neighborhood.

I’ve never taken refuge deep in the bowels of a subway to avoid being annihilated by indiscriminate vacuum bombs and wayward ballistic missiles.

I’ve never tried to escape through a supposed safe passageway, only to find it mined and under attack, or sending me right into the arms of the very forces trying to kill me and my fellow citizens.

I’ve never suffered the ravages of a savage siege, with hope fading that the rest of the free world will be able to send the military reinforcements and materiel, or the food, water and medical supplies we so desperately need, to keep a madman from imposing his tyranny on my country.

I’ve never watched a six-year-old kid bleed out on a makeshift hospital bed in a dust-filled, bloody bunker because the enemy is purposely targeting hospitals and civilian areas in its maniacal attack on innocents as a way to extort our surrender.

I did pay $4.59 a gallon at the gas station today.

Seems so obscenely petty to hear my fellow citizens complaining about that…

or wearing a mask…

or inflation…

or the Internet being out…

or any of the other trifling and trivial inconveniences they are supposedly suffering — when folks on the other side of the world are so very bravely suffering all those terrible, terrifying atrocities I listed above…

Day after harrowing day after harrowing day.

May the Ukrainians find peace and security soon, and be safely reunited with their loved ones back in their homes soon.

And may the rest of us on this side of the world shut the fuck up.