Letter: Dreams of a better future
Living here in the Vail Valley with family and friends, surrounded by the beauty of nature, is a true privilege that I do not take for granted. However, there is a giant crack in my heart when I see the pain and suffering that is now occurring in another country.
People there have the same dreams as all of us around the globe. But their dreams of living in peace in their own environment are being crushed by a demon of selfishness and delusions of geopolitical grandeur. It is also a reminder to all of us how fragile our life is when evil appears on the doorstep. At the same time, this is not a political discussion of world leaders or who is to blame.
Escalating the situation in Ukraine to a potential World War III is not a solution anyone would want, but we cannot be quiet about this and hope it will just go away. There are are so many more of us than one mad man! We must try and find ways to help not only the people of Ukraine, but also the people of Russia. They have for centuries seen their children killed in senseless wars all the way back to the Tsars. Russia had been very nonchalant with the most precious resource of all — its people.
The Internet and social media did not exist during the Tsarist rule or the Soviet Union times, but it does today — so we need to help the Russian people to get the message across. There are about 144 million people living in the largest country in the world and the population is not growing. Everyday during the last several weeks parents in Russia have been devastated by the loss of their children. This was not their choice, as they have no say where their sons are sent after being drafted. And this will continue with Putin in power.
The Russian people have to stand up to this tyrant and have their voices heard. He cannot arrest the entire population mass. We, in the other hemisphere, should keep sending information about what this tyrant is doing to the children of both nations. He will not be able to shut down all the platforms that are available through social media. We need to bomb (or “saturate” which is a much better word than “bomb”) any available channel of information to the people of Russia and Ukraine, so they understand that most of this planet are on the side of peace. We will do what we can to help defeat the war demon, without deadly weapons and unnecessary sacrifice of young lives, through any information channel we can use that they can see.
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Eventually, the messages will get across to the point that Putin could not ignore his own people and this madness could be stopped. Use the social media again and again to achieve something we all want: peace and freedom for all to be with family, friends and nature, just as we have living in this beautiful place we call home.
Jan E. Helen
Vail
