The World I Want

I saw a movie last night that I need to share.

The movie we watched was called "Everything is Illuminated." It was a really beautiful film about a young man going to the Ukraine in search of the woman who saved his grandfather from being killed by the NAZIs, in the end though he discovers that his grandfather was saved by the fact that he left the village to go to America a week before the NAZIs arrived. He left behind his wife and his unborn child, whom he was going to America to find a better home for. It was such a beautiful movie because I feel like we all wonder about our past like that, but most people aren't fortunate enough to be able to piece the clues together.

I am part Ukrainian, and my family has a very similar story to this movie, which may have been why I was so deeply moved (besides the fact that the message is so powerful). My mother's father was born in this country at the end of the first world war to Polish and Ukrainian immigrants. The way I've always heard the story, the men came to this country before the women (around the turn of the century) and were followed by the women and children after they had homes and jobs. Family had to be left behind of course, not everyone could or wanted to come. Care packages were sent on a regular basis, and letters were sent and received consistently. The line of communication was never lost between the family. By the time the second world war rolled around, the family in this country was scrambling to keep track of the family in Europe.

Eventually, the family stopped responding to letters and packages sent.

The assumtion always was that they were casualties of war. But no one knows exactly what happened to them, or if there were any survivors at all. We probably never will know.

Hate is so big, and so difficult to overcome. It's so easy to hate the NAZIs for killing our friends and families, and for hating us for no reason at all. But nothing will ever be resolved by fighting hate with hate. Violence begats violence, hate perpetuates hate. I don't hate the NAZIs for killing a family I never got the chance to know, or for shaking the world with so much hatred. I love the beauty in life, spring flowers and chirping birds, light rain on a cloudy afternoon, fresh air and sunshine forever. I don't understand hate, I never will. But I do understand love, and I know the world I want for myself, and for my family. The world I want is love.