Fearless

For all my life I have been afraid of the dark. I don't know what it is about the dark that scares me. The fear is very real, but the actual danger of the dark is non existent. This exact scenario is seen on a large scale every day. The U.S. population fears terrorism, teens become afraid when they see a police officer, every day we face fear. Why is it though that we become afraid of certain peoples, objects, or situations. It is all based on perception, what we know about certain people, how we see them or that group of people. For instance after 9/11 the majority of the American population became fearful of Arabs. Seeing them on the street, or in a taxi most people grouped them with terrorism, understandable of course, but wrong. We as a society make these scapegoats to help us cope with fear, the same way a young child will have a night light to help them cope with being afraid of the dark. We place all of our fear into blaming someone else in order to feel safe. In more recent news, the black community in Ferguson, who rightfully so, are quite fearful of the police force in their town. But why is it that we become so afraid of what has happened in the past. Why can't we forgive and forget? Because fear has nothing to do with forgiving, and everything to do with forgetting. Perhaps the community in Ferguson has forgiven its police force, and maybe the U.S. has stopped blaming all Arabs for the acts of few, but what really matters in forgetting. Fear thrives on our memories, what we saw, what we heard, or what we experienced.

The manipulation of fear often times is more frightening than the original fear itself. How governments scare people into voting for certain policies, or for certain representatives. How groups of people use fear to scare people into believing their philosophies, these tactics have been successfully used for years. From the Mongols, to the Nazi's, to 9/11. My question though, is how is it that we become so afraid of something that in order to feel safe we have to completely destroy it. German's fear of bankruptcy led to the rise of Hitler. Americans fear of terrorism led to a large scale war on terror. What is it in our bodies or minds that drives us to take such large scale actions against fear? Because that is the only way to fix it. Fear doesn't work itself out, or present a simple answer, the only way to defeat fear is to destroy it. You are afraid of the dark? Turn on a light. You are afraid of a spider? Kill it. There is no easy way around fear, no pill to help, no book on beating it. Fear comes down to a decision. You can live and be afraid, or you can act. In the end everyone will die, certain practices will stop and some groups will be dismantled. In the end, it all ends, so why be afraid. Fear is a choice, and you have to risk it to get the biscuit.

Veterans

     Some say that all veterans somewhere, somewhere deep down, connect. Whether it is that they all had the same belief, that they should fight for their country, or they all experienced the same things whether it be combat or boot camp. But what really connects all veterans? Do they all really connect? I cannot say, for I am not a veteran, I have not been in combat or through a boot camp, but Tim O'Brien was. In fact O'Brien wrote a story on his experience in battle, his was in Vietnam. So can we connect other veterans stories to his? Are veterans from Iraq connected somehow to Tim O'Brien? I would say yes. Despite fighting in different wars, in different generations, with different technology and different motives, they still fought. Certainly just being in combat does not connect them, but after listening to their stories, it is the beliefs, the emotions that connect them. Both O'Brien, a Vietnam veteran, and Kobe Bazelle and Truman Muir, both Iraq veterans, spoke or wrote about their experiences. They connect in many ways, and through several different faucets, both in tangible and intangible experiences.  It isn't just going to war that makes these men connect, rather it is very different than just war that makes them similar. It is coming back from war, examining what happened and what they did that make them similar. How they returned from war and told their stories, that is how we can connect them.

   

Kobe Bazelle a machine gunner in Iraq was sitting in an auditorium full of soldiers when a hypothetical question was asked. The question was, "If you were driving under an overpass with women and children above you throwing rocks down at you, what do you do?"(Bazelle) There were two responses, "Light them up."(Bazelle) and the opposite. Bazelle pondered why women and children were involved in the question. If they were there for effect, or to see if answers changed. In the end it came down to, "It's better safe than sorry, better him dead than
you." (Bazelle) Tim O'Brien in his book, The Things They Carried, identifies with the same
answer, better him than you. Tim O'Brien talks of killing a man on a trail in My Khe, naturally his emotions were all over the place, but what made the kill ok? A friend Kiowa tells him, "Turn it all upside down- you want that? I mean, be honest." (Page 120, O'Brien) What Tim did is no different than the answer Bazelle found to be correct. You do what you have to do to live. Truman Muir spoke more of his actual combat. He spoke of his injury, the pain and agony, the hardships. O'Brien did the same. Muir when speaking about acquiring his foot injury says, "I shouldn't be worried about my foot while one of my best friends is dying." (Muir) What is it that Muir is trying to say through this. That you have to be there for others all the time, no matter the circumstances? Or is he trying to say that everyone is injured at some point, and sometimes being brave is too much. Soldier prepared to fireO'Brien seems to identify with the second option. He writes in his book of a young soldier who maybe just maybe, could have saved a life. He says, "He wished he could've explained some of this. How he had been braver than he ever thought possible, but how he had not been so brave as he wanted to be. " (Page 147 O'Brien) The distinction here is that being brave was going to war. The bravest thing was leaving home, facing a gun, holding one, being a soldier. But in the end everyone wishes the could've been braver. That they could've saved one man, or done one thing. And perhaps, that is how all veterans are related.

A Notebook

"How it felt to me: that is getting closer to the truth about a notebook." Joan Didion. Why is it that we keep a notebook, write down seemingly unimportant and irrelevant facts in a book? Joan Didion would argue that it is to remember. But what makes the notebook worth reading, what gives it weight? Certainly rereading events from your previous life provides very little satisfaction, and to anyone other than the writer must be boring; but still we write. Joan Didion said simply, "Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember?" What do we want to remember so badly that we write it down? It has to be the feeling of course. Pictures capture memories, stories and movies as well, but what makes you relive the moment, makes you feel that same emotion all over again? Writing it down. And in order to feel that same emotion sometimes we bend the truth, "In fact I have abandoned altogether that kind of pointless entry; instead I tell what some would call lies." Joan Didion. This is where entries become arguable, are you bending the truth so much that it becomes a completely different story? Or are you rather exaggerating, lying just enough for the moment to seem real, to feel authentic. This argument is when Joan Didion's assertions on keeping a notebook, meet up with Tim Obrien's assertions on the importance of memories. They both lie to tell what is the most true. They use exaggeration in their speech, and story telling to make the reader believe, to feel what they felt, to make writing more than just words on a paper, but to make it become life.

Where does lying cross the line of helping the reader believe, and cross into making the reader question? It is a tough line to define, and one that Tim Obrien has found quite remarkably. In his book The Things They Carried, he tells the story of himself as a young soldier in the Vietnam war. Something many of his readers don't understand, never knew about, or rarely connected with. For this reason, to make his story contain the sorrow, pain, and depth of the real war he must lie about the small details. He does so because the purpose of his book was never to tell an exact replication of his war, for few people would read it and certainly there would be bias, but rather to tell a war story of the struggle, the hump to beat the war. Obrien's work, his purpose, was to inform his reader of what "really" happened in Vietnam. He forces upon the audience emotions that many don't want to feel. His method of persuasion may not be the most legit, but it worked. While reading his story I several times felt uncomfortable, disturbed, sick to my stomach. And I am sure that if I told Obrien this he would say I was supposed to, it was successful; because surely he never felt giddy and excited while in the war, rather he himself felt disturbed, uncomfortable, and sick to his stomach. He said himself, "But listen. Even that story is made up. I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth." (The Things They Carried, O'Brien, page 171).

So bringing it all together, there will always be accusations, and critiques of the style of writing Didion and Obrien used. It is as inevitable as death, but there will also always be that argument of its success. When you read their works you certainly don't think about what they felt in the moment, you rather place yourself in their shoes. For this to work, for it to carry meaning they must force you into a situation altered to make these emotions the same as theirs. Is it wrong? Some may say yes, others no, but in the end it isn't a question of right or wrong, its a question of why? It is to remember, to re-live the hardest moments. They write so that for them, it all comes back, it is real and tangible and true. So you could say it's wrong or right, smart or dumb, believable of false, it doesn't matter, in the end it is the realest truth. "How it felt to me: that is getting closer to the truth about a notebook."