I've stopped war reporting. I realized that I'd answered all of my questions about war and about myself.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a journey of self-discovery and the search for deeper understanding beyond external conflicts.
In this quote, Sebastian Junger expresses a profound realization about the futility of war reporting after having explored its complexities and the impact it has on human existence. By stating that he has answered all his questions about war and about himself, he suggests that true understanding comes from introspection rather than external observation, highlighting the importance of self-awareness and personal growth in the face of societal issues.
In practice
During a speech on the impact of conflict on personal growth.
The Army might screw you and your girlfriend might dump you and the enemy might kill you, but the shared commitment to safeguard one anotherβs lives is unnegotiable and only deepens with time. The willingness to die for another person is a form of love that even religions fail to inspire, and the experience of it changes a person profoundly.
The cause doesn't have to be righteous and battle doesn't have to be winnable; but over and over again throughout history, men have chosen to die in battle with their friends rather than to flee on their own and survive.
When you're scared, you're still hanging on to life. When you're ready to die, you let it go. A sort of emptying out occurs, a giving up on the world that seems oddly familiar even if you've never done it before.
Maybe the ultimate wound is the one that makes you miss the war you got it in.
It's fun to have money, but the more money I get, the less interesting it becomes. If you don't have very much, you have to think about it. If you are starving, you become interested in food. If you are struggling to pay the bills, money becomes tragically important.
In some ways, risk-taking is the ultimate act of self-indulgence , an obscene insult to the preciousness of life. And yet, how can one dismiss something that persists despite every reasonable theory that it shouldn't?
An horrible stillness first invades our ear, And in that silence we the tempest fear.
The body is an instrument, the mind its function, the witness and reward of its operation.
I had a thought, on the way home from the rock field, that the things we don't know about a person are the things that make them human, and it made me feel sad to think that, but sad in that reassuring way that some sadness has, a sadness that says welcome home in twelve different languages.
In a free society, one does not have to deal with those who are irrational. One is free to avoid them.
There is not room for Death, Nor atom that his might could render void: Thou - Thou art Being and Breath, And what Thou art may never be destroyed.
Consciousness permits us to develop the instruments of culture - morality and justice, religion, art, economics and politics, science and technology. Those instruments allow us some measure of freedom in the confrontation with nature.
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