alive

One of my Favourite Things is when someone surprises me with a fresh idea or a new perspective. (I am lucky – it happens frequently).

I am talking to a man. Who has lived through a terrible, and relatively recent, war. He is a Happy Man. His rumble.laugh scoops me up.

He tells me that for him, war was not so bad. He says that it was sort of easier than Real Life. All he had to worry about (he says) was staying alive. He didn’t have to worry about whether to go to the lake on the weekend or how to pay for his kids’ schoolbooks or what to have for dinner.

He just had to stay alive.