Six Notebooks

Hibakusha

Survivors of the atomic bomb whose minds were shattered

Reading Barry Lopez.

Or listening

I can’t grok it anymore. The death we visit upon people. The war. The raging wars. The Saudis killing refugees trying to cross the border. The famine. The everything. This miracle of life that we spend so many resources to destroy.

It has been building in me

I don’t understand Ukraine. I mean, I do. The Ukrainians don’t want to lose their country. Putin has some strange dream of conquest. But neither side can win. Or so it appears. So the war grinds on. Grinding life into dust. Daily, minute by minute extinguishing life for no reason but ego of leaders.

No exit.

It has been weighing heavy on mind. Or that is too much. It strikes me at times the ridiculousness of the exercise. On both parts.

And every minute another precious human life snuffed out. A candle extinguished to no end— as if any end justifies murder.

Maybe it’s my practice of sitting which has deepened over the last months. Stripping away layers of identity. With that, realizing so many of our conflicts are conflicts of identity. How ridiculous this is.

Then listening to Lopez this morning hearing his definition of Hibakusha— survivors of the atomic bomb whose minds were shattered. That is what I have been saying, in a way, we are a world with so many broken minds. People shattered by something. Shattered, perhaps, by a world they can’t understand searching for some meaning. Searching for some way to make sense of everything around them. Of how their dreams never materialized. Trying to filigree out why they feel empty and purposeless. Their minds break. They look for a leader. They find solace in conspiracy theories. Either can be ridiculous and nonsensical but it gives the shattered a framework for the world. A purpose: to spread the hidden truth. A meaning in following, in believing. Some backfill for the hole in their “souls”.