11 November 2025: ARMISTICE DAY

I forgot to take a two minute silence today. And I haven't bought a red 
poppy (only because I haven't actually been anywhere selling them this year). 
I have always had mixed feelings about this day. On the one hand, I think 
it's good to take a moment to remember *just how many people* lost their 
lives, sustained injury, endured suffering unfathomable, in order to protect 
the civil liberties I enjoy today. In the UK, I doubt there's a single 
village which hasn't raised a stone memorial carved with the names of the 
dead. I doubt a single one of those memorials is left unadorned at this time 
of year. "We will remember them."

On the other, it seems morbid: an annual glorification of the blood shed. 
WWII, the war to end all wars - except, of course, we know it didn't. War 
rages on across the world, we simply have the privilege to be sheltered from 
it again. It isn't on *our* doorstep. Hooray!

I feel especially conflicted about it this year, though. The tone of the 
conversation around politics is increasingly hostile and/or depressive. 
Everyone thinks everything is going in the wrong direction (across the 
political spectrum), no one seems to have any new ideas about how to move 
forward as a society, and while elected leadership does little of substance 
about any of it all, the electorate seems to be increasingly left behind.

History tells us that when the electorate feels left behind and unheard, 
violence tends to follow. People *will* do what they feel they need to do to 
survive, and that can look like anything from stealing a loaf of bread, to 
murdering the man next door so that he can't steal it first.

So on this Armistice Day especially, the remembrance and honouring of the 
fallen seems hollow. 

I hold on very tightly to the hope that humanity will pull through, that 
future violence and unrest can yet be averted. I am trying, I suppose, to 
have faith in people. 

It was pointed out to me the other day on bboard that this is likely to be 
wishful thinking. But if I don't hold on to that hope, that wish for people 
to live peacefully, safely and with their most basic needs met, I'm not sure 
I'd stay functional enough to contribute my own small part.

Bit of a bleak one, I suppose, but that's 2025 for you.

See you around,

lilac