Emergency

I attended a panel discussion of Gino Starada, a founder of a non profit organization, Emergency, and Howard Zinn, a historian and social activist regarding anti-war, which took place at Cooper Union University last Sunday. Founded in Italy in 1994, Emergency has been providing medical and surgical assistance to war victims mainly in the Middle And Near East. I am honestly ignorant of politics or political related issues and I never joined any antiwar movement. It is not because I am for a war, but because I sometimes feel that the air of those movements or campaigns can be similar to the concept of a war in a way. I don’t like demonstrators shouting and asking for peace on the streets, which is not peaceful at all. Plus, I never was for a war and never will be, which I think is a common sense. I don’t need to be educated by people for this matter. However, I attended this, as a lot of my friends are working for Emergency as volunteer stuffs. Strada introduced about Emergency and what they have been doing for a decade. It was shocking to know that majority of the victims of the wars are civilians and one third of them are children. He showed the pictures of victims who lost their arms, legs or eyes, which was absolutely painful to see. I felt angry with the fact that the victims were always civilians. I was impressed and touched though that Emergency people have been physically helping the victims providing the hospitals in the war zone. Especially after I saw peoples having spent 20 millions dollars for purchasing a piece of art ( ex. David Simith's sculpture...) in art auctions last week, I was moved by what they do. What if I am rich enough to afford multi million dollars of an artwork? Am I buying it or doing something good for the society? I will never be able to be that rich anyway, but I say I will do the latter. I was glad that I attended this lecture in the end. There are respectful people like these guys, or like Dalai Lama and Maria Theresa who are and were really serious about our world, who physically do and did something to improve our society. It is easy to call for peace, but hard to actually do. Anybody can criticize, but not many people execute. I am not ready for doing or saying big things. I don’t want to be hypocrite, as I need to be a peaceful person first. I have seen many people who try to do or say big things, but in reality, I caught them acting out with a small thing like being pushed by a stranger in the subway. The person who makes a strong appeal peace to the public has to first cultivate peace within self, otherwise it never be convincing. That is what I strongly believe. One thing that I regretted about this night was that I could not ask both discussants this question.... "If a stranger hit you on your cheek, how would you respond?" I hope the answer would be like this... "I will smile at him or her." PEACE WITHIN. That is the first thing that we can try to do for peace, but not easy. I tell ya.