The older I’ve gotten, the more aware I’ve become of the concept of nationalism, and the more distasteful I find it.  It’s not that I don’t love my country; personally, though, I would like to see unity among humanity, a world without borders.  John Lennon said it best:

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

This is obviously a utopian paradise that has never existed, and never will.  There are countries, there are borders, and there are ideologies that people fight and die for.  This is what war is about.

Today, on Memorial Day, let us all spend some time – between barbecues and holiday sale shopping – to reflect on what today is really about: human lives lost in service to their country.

These are somebody’s sons, fathers, brothers, sisters, mothers, daughters.  The vast majority of people who die in war are very young, with what should be decades and decades of life still ahead of them, but gone in an instant, and every family and friend of the fallen must undertake the agony of learning how to navigate life without their loved ones.  This is the price of war.

Let us not forget.