I believe that through a time of troubles love to motherland can be compared to the feelings of someone who is deeply in love with another person. A deep love requires a big heart, too. At the same time if troubles last long, love needs more patience and realistic outlook on the situation. At the time of Euromaidan, it was easy to love Ukraine. Now love to Ukraine can be compared to love to a spouse in a long-lasting marriage when you know every drawback and every negative feature of each other’s characters. But love is still there. And it requires patience.
I feel a deep sorrow while reading the texts of my old friends who once supported the Revolution of Dignity but now, at the times of stagnation and mess, they have been demonstrating their disenchantment with Ukraine.
Ukraine exists not for the sake of those who first fall in love with it and then after stripping it off to the naked and seeing all the birthmarks and scars on its body start back with disgust.
It lives its own way and if Ukraine is doing worse than contemporary Germany, for instance, let us remember what Germany had been through in the middle of the XX century. God save us all from that.
I don’t think that all our troubles have come with the war with Russia – the longest and strangest war of the XXI century.
Our problems have not begun with the war and won’t be gone with the peace.
On the other hand, I don’t see any possibilities for peace now. I do not see any smart ways for solving our problems either.
There is a principle in Church – hate the sin but love the sinner. In medical practice – struggle with a disease for the benefit of the patient.
And let the scarecrow of putinism be a precise benchmark for us – “Danger! This will kill you!”
And they are killing. Even in the first days of the New Year two of our military men have been killed.
Amid this war there is one other danger – falling in love with war, radicalism growing in words and deeds, further society splitting.
Many years ago a young man who was undergoing treatment in a mental hospital by request of the military commissariat said to me – I WANT TO GO TO THE ARMY TO KILL PEOPLE AND BE PRAISED FOR THAT!
It was clear that the young man was not fit for service in the army – he was suffering from a severe mental disease. At the same time what a healthy man has in his unconscious is openly declared by a psychotic. The terrible trap of war lies in the fact that aggression is a part of human nature whereas it is controlled and repressed. The war allows for “canalizing the aggression” and giving it a socially accepted status….
I hate war. But to defend one’s country from the aggressor one doesn’t have to and even shouldn’t love war. It is for the aggressor to be cruel and to enjoy killing.
Boris Khersonskij