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.