Recently, my 14 years old daughter asked me to watch with her a movie recommended by her history teacher called “Testament of Youth”. I did vaguely remember seeing the poster when out in cinemas, identifying it as another romantic movie with a bit of historic background. I slightly reluctantly sat with her, mainly eager to fulfil my mothering duties in spending so called quality time with my children. 3o minutes into the movie and I was totally immersed into this deeply moving story, wishing I was actually there at the time sharing the lives of the main characters. From that moment onwards, as the story became more and more tragic, I simply couldn’t stop the tears falling down my cheeks and I was totally transported in time. Matters were made even worse when I discovered that the movie was inspired from an autobiography and all the events were real.

Since then, I have done a lot of thinking about what happened in the past and the way we live now. I find it hard to comprehend that people have lived through the 1st world war , only to suffer the 2nd World War twenty years later. That many young people died in that first war, but for the ones who survived and rebuilt their lives, they had potentially to see their own children dying in the second war. That parents had to send their children to fight as the “honourable thing”, only to do the same with their grand-children some years later.

Surely, we must be grateful today that, following such a carnage in the first part of the XXth century, the world has come to conclusion that in most cases – and unfortunately not all – peace is better than war. Looking through history, it is only since the second part of the XXth century that civilians have stopped going regularly to war, at least in Europe; for people living in England and most European countries, the idea of losing loved ones at war is mostly foreign.

Only that we have now become complacent about peace. Nowadays, we are taking for granted that all we own shouldn’t be taken away from us and that we are masters of our own lives. And anything that comes in the way of that perfectly established life is made very difficult to bare. Illnesses should be cured, money should be possessed, problems should be taken care of, happiness should be obtained . In a world where peace has become a given, human beings have more time to complain about their condition.

Isn’t it symptomatic that the current pandemic is referred to as “a war”? It doesn’t seem to me than anyone is dying to honour his country, or that we are consciously sending anyone to his death to defeat the disease. Yes, it does seem that people are risking their lives on a daily basis like in times of war, but have we forgotten that being human means risking our life every day anyway?