What a hectic mess we yet again find ourselves in. A pain of a situation brought upon us by unhappy children, people contempt with what they know – Plato’s cave syndrome, populism, lack of vision, fear of progress and possibly a handful of other psychologically interesting factors.

As always, this is a stupid thing to say but these are my opinions and as such only reflect me and my brain, not anyone else.

I won’t get into Putin’s stupid evil invasion, or into NATO’s expansion or even into the cold war, I don’t think these matter anymore.

I’m young by old-people standards, I’m 28 I think, I grew up watching The Jetsons and being so excited about the future, I’ve went from landline to StarTAC to Androids and now iPhones, from dial-up to breakneck speeds on fiber, from the world being so big – to having true friends across thousands of miles. I grew up innocent and rebellious and taking everything for granted, only with the hope that we can do so much better than we are.

I grew up watching 9/11 on TV without understanding what we were witnessing, living through consequences that hit more close to home that I was able to understand at the time. It felt so far away, despite C-17s and all sort of other C’s buzzing my house constantly.

20 years later I have RC-135s, Aries and F-16 (among others) birds buzzing my house yet again, 20 years in which I (alongside the rest of the world) tried to build something of myself, fought with demons small and big, and arrived at a sort of just-next-door balance. We all did the same, war was out of any sort of question for all of us – since none of us ever heard someone use “I’d go to war” as anything else than a metaphor for their beliefs. I’ve recently told my therapist that my whole plan for life specifically plans for a lack of war, my whole castle is made out of cards that don’t sit on war being anywhere near me. I know it’s a reality of life and even that it does have some benefits, I also know people in X places have been suffering it for a lifetime by now, that doesn’t make my situation better, if I could I’d very much like those people to also not endure the horror of war.

I’ll come off as egoistical, but I’m more importantly going to be honest and naked in my writing here, which is the excuse I will want applied to me later on.

A bit of prologue: back in the 90s Romania had to choose between two people, it was the country’s first democratic election – one of the candidates was a bow-tie wearing older gentleman saying “I’ll fight to my last blood cell for your right to not agree with me” and his opponent a former communist party member, someone fallen from the graces of the then-leader Ceaușescu. Romanians – out of fear and lack of better knowledge chose the latter, because it was what they knew. I am constantly blaming romanian for the choice they chose, with hindsight always being 20/20. This is something I often transpose whenever the discussion takes a turn into the “the politicians, it’s their fault” area, because it isn’t though is it? They are merely put there by people who believe they are the most accurate reflection of their interests, and if the politician is a populist – he’s there because the people want, nay, need that populism. Populism is, seemingly lately just another word for social measures (that are popular exactly because there are a lot of people in need, and who can blame anyone for voting for someone who promises you a better tomorrow in whatever form that may be), such taboo for liberals – helping those in need. Point of the matter – we choose what we (in the majority) are.

I’m trying to set the scene here, so it may seem I’m walking on a thousand paths. I am.

To the people in Ukraine, to the ones I know and the ones I do not, to Slava, Lucy, to all of you – I cannot imagine what you’re going through, I wouldn’t have had the strength, stoicism or will to live – going through what you are. I will always have the upmost respect for the power you’ve shown during these times. You did not want this, you did not need this, you did not deserve this.

Yet, looking at it from way high above – this is a war now for imaginary lines. For Putin’s idiotistical imperialistic desires. I am ferm on the side that he should not be allowed to get away with this, nor should lines be redrawn due to the wishes of a rat-faced second-hand Tsar-wannabe.

Those lines are funny like that, they were the reason for the world’s many past wars, from lebensraum to the Roman Empire to Russia now.

It feels now that it’s a perfect example of us – the collective people of the world – focusing too much on what makes us different, from the street we live on, the neighborhood, county, country, continent, color, faith, gender or any other totally arbitrary or wheel of life attribute we could imagine, and not enough on what makes us the same. Any two of us are way more similar than different, we may not speak the same language or praise the same God or live the same lives, but I strongly believe we all want to just live our little-unimportant-to-others-lives and go to that little coffee shop when we’re stressed and rejoice for 10 minutes before going back into the huge-for-us stress that is work or whatever we may have on our minds.

I’m trying not to say “give them the land” because not so long ago I was hellbent against anyone saying that a specific part of my country belongs to another, so I would be a hypocrite, yet what is evolution if not reaching a point where you can see you were a hypocrite.

I don’t like the perspectives of war, I don’t like the idea of Europe and it’s sometimes-shame worthy cousin the U.S. getting into a fist fight with Russia over Ukraine.

I don’t like it because it would affect me.

I don’t like it because it would affect my dear ones.

I can’t hide the naked egoism in here, otherwise I’d be a hypocrite.

I don’t like it because whether a Ukrainian, Russian, American, Chinese, Dutch or German or any nationality person dies – in the end a person dies and I swear to fucking God I cannot fathom we’re still accepting this.

In a way this is what Russian people chose as leaders, but it’s hard to blame people for choosing bad leaders, I’ve seen it happen here as well many many times, but if you think about it in realistic terms – of course the poor sod with nothing to feed the kids will vote for the guy saying he’s going to bring milk and honey on all tables.

Which brings me to diplomacy, and how we’re fucking failing at it. We’ve made multiple bodies as time went on specifically to keep a relationship going between two of the world’s nuclear powers that have historically hated each other (without a good reason), seeing X person being denied access to a meeting of said body makes me furious, because that was the whole purpose of it – a meeting between those two parties. I’d also very much enjoy all diplomats to remember that their sole purpose is communicating, not being children that won’t talk to Y because “I don’t condone their attitude”, well, then you can go not condone it at home and stop representing me, since I stand for war not breaking out.

I also have some issues with the US press especially pushing the idea that Ukraine can win this – because I’m so sorry but it can’t. You’re a non-nuclear state fighting a nuclear state whose whole strategy in the World War was “throw as many bodies as we have” at it (granted, the US helped), and won. Even if you’d fight this strategy of theirs, would your people still exist to enjoy anything left of the country? At this point, no one can win – not Ukraine, not Russia. Everyone can cut their losses though, count their dead, mourn their loss, and strive for a better tomorrow. Putin’s going to take a hit because of this, definitely – but I’m always going to wonder if this could’ve happened 6 months ago if the diplomacy failure wouldn’t have happened, and he would’ve had an out for the local political scene in Russia.

I want, and need – more talks about peace, about reaching the middle ground, not someone losing, but everyone winning. This is a big planet with a lot of people on it, surely we can make an actual effort to all get along.

I may be naive in my views, but hope is one thing I still have, and if not obvious – this represents solely my views as a person.

I fucking hate war dogs.