A Handful of Paradoxically Deep Words — from SAS Veteran Robin Horsfall — Synopsize the State of the World
© 2015 Peter Free
13 January 2015
When one is forced to look closely . . .
Former British Special Air Service (SAS) sniper, Robin Horsfall, talked about how his experiences — as a mercenary in Mozambique’s civil war — affected him, after he returned to civilian life in the United Kingdom:
“I’d come from an environment where death was an everyday occurrence, where children were starving, where women got their heads chopped off,” he said.
“Twenty-four hours later you’re back at home watching a Christmas video of your children with an excess of things they throw in the bin.
“You’ve gone from starvation to excess in a short period of time and that makes you very angry. Your wife thinks she’s done something wrong, your kids don’t understand and you don’t understand.”
© 2015 Mark Blunden, Homeless Veterans appeal: The embassy siege sniper who found civilian life a struggle, The Independent [UK] (12 January 2015)
In the United States, within a few blocks, I can experience essentially the same disparity in less dramatically obvious motion. But only, if I’m actually seeing.
The moral? — The material unfairness of existence is what most grates
This is something we could do something about. If we were not so abysmally human.
Robin Horsfall’s self-described angry confusion is, perhaps, characteristic of awakening to the implied conundrum.