I was born during World War II, a war that saw the death of my father in combat. As I was growing up these two facts made me feel that I had special relationship with that war and everything to do with it. As a child my understanding was limited, as I knew only that there were bad guys who wanted bad things for the world, and we were the good guys who fought for what was right. Very simplistic, but what a seven-year-old could understand.
However, even at a young age, there was one character that I knew about who seemed very bad but was a puzzle to me. First off, he had a funny mustache which no one seemed to laugh at, and secondly, I could at once recognize him as a bully being very conversant with that personality from my contemporaries. Why the adults in the world let Hitler take over country after country, believing his promise that it would be his last, was beyond me. I knew a bully’s promises were as flimsy as his self-control, and I wondered why the adults in the world did not recognize this as well.
I eventually grew up, and as I studied more histories of that conflict, I began to understand that life is not as simple as it seemed at seven. But despite that I still do wonder all these years later, if Europe had stopped Hitler in his early forays into foreign territory, if the results might not have been very different.
That brings me to today, and the prices at the gas pump. There is a collective national groan over the rapidly rising rate of fuel for our cars. In fact, this one item may determine our next election. However, behind every fill-up of high-priced fuel lurks a bully who needs to be stopped. As I fill up my car and the meter on the pump merrily passes fifty dollars, I envision in my mind the cities of Ukraine being bombed out of existence by the current bully, Vladimir Putin. Whole swathes of homes that housed families and lives have been eradicated by one man’s desire to own yet another country not his own. If you have studied history, his reasons sound terribly familiar to his look-alike from the thirties and forties. And he has promised faithfully that all he wants is Ukraine ---- nothing else. Hmmmmm. So why do Sweden and Finland suddenly want to join NATO? Do they at least recognize the value of a bully’s promises?
No more than anyone else do I want to pay more for gas, but if I remind myself that I am in a small way helping a nation that does not deserve what is happening to it, I can fill my car with purpose. I must remember that my home and family are intact, my country is not being invaded by a tyrant, and I am not a refugee on the road to nowhere with my life in what I can carry. This is not looking back over my shoulder at another time. This is right now. And for me, it is at the gas pump. Who knew a filling station could be this purposeful?