‘A Private War’ is the story of Marie Colvin, a foreign affairs journalist for The Sunday Times who spent much of her career telling stories from the front lines of war zones. One of those wars killed her, as it killed over half a million people, in Syria. She was one of the brave, those willing to go in and tell the stories of the people whose homes, families, and lives were forfeit to the cruelties of war and the apathy of the outside world. Rosamund Pike does a tremendous job, giving an incredibly powerful performance as Colvin, capturing both her courage and her flaws as you see the toll a lifetime of exposure to these horrors takes. Surrounding her, you see the war torn cities and peoples that she sought to open our eyes to - the innocents, the civilians, those who end up just as numbers the further away you get from the bombing sites. It’s a well-executed film with dynamic acting, but I was unprepared for how gutted it would also make me feel.

As I exit her world and re-renter mine, to an afternoon where the sun is shining, and people are walking ambivalently through the shopping mall that surrounds the cinema where I witnessed the war crimes, the bloodshed, the tears, the anguish, I am struck by the confidence with which I determine “my” world versus “hers.”

Yes, the world I just exited was one of escapism, one of cinema and theatrics and a fictionalised accounting of something that occurred years ago. And yet, in my heart I know that world is also a part of mine, a part of this world, this planet which we all call home, no matter what country, religion, race, or other divisive signifier we choose to define our life by, and in so defining, we also define the “other.” The other against which we rage, we rant, we war, we fight. The other which we call a threat to our life, while they, across the room, across the aisle, across the wall, across the border, across the world, call us a threat to theirs. But what the film was saying, what Colvin was trying to say, and what I have to believe, is beneath the labels, the stories are the same. The people, not those in power, or with the guns, not those leading the fight or the negotiations or the sanctions, but the people who live every day, and want to keep living, their stories are like ours. We want to live. We want to be happy, to be healthy and enjoy our families, provide for them, work for them, find our purpose. We want to honour our traditions, while building a brighter future for our descendants. We want to live. It is universal, and is far more widespread than the hate and the fear that the corrupt leaders and fear-mongering cults want to instil in us. I have to believe that.

But what do we do?

What do we do in the face of hate? In the face of corruption? In the face of so much suffering? Give money - and yet, we discover that aid doesn’t get through blockades, that some charities are corrupt, that the small amount we can give barely scratches the surface while those who have money refuse to open their wallets. Vote - and yet, I voted, I voted against hateful speeches and acts, against ignorance and lies, against the wilful vilification of science and facts, and it didn’t make a difference. March - and yet, after the march, we return home flushed from the patriotism and togetherness and activism, but the flush fades as we turn back to our day-to-day lives. How do we fight this apathy that is so easily fallen into, when we don’t see the victims every day, we don’t have those memories or those nightmares that the bold few suffer just to tell us what is happening somewhere “over there”, whose stories we skim between videos of dogs and lists of stylish ways to be zero waste? How do we listen, listen to the history of what has happened here, what our ancestors fought and got through and got past, and how do we begin to understand that if we don’t stay vigilant, stay compassionate, stay in the fight, that it could all happen again?

What do we do?

What do we do when every day just feels harder to face, when the bed is a refuge from the news and the noise and the constant pressure to fight for every cause, because you feel you are one of the few that care. How can we make caring contagious? How can we infuse humanity back into our neighbors, let alone into our leaders? How can we know that children are starving, are dying, are being murdered, and turn away because it hasn’t happened in front of us? How can we fight the idea that “seeing is believing” in its most extreme, its most stubborn? How can we remind each other that freedom is not easy, compassion is not easy, life is not easy, but god, if we don’t fight for those things, then how can we truly live with ourselves? What if we convinced each other to learn, learn everything, learn about ourselves and our neighbors, learn about our “other” and the rest of the world, learn about the past and the present. Look up facts, then look them up again. And again and again, and learn that not every opinion is right, but it is okay to be wrong. It is okay to change your mind, and it is admirable to expand it. Learning isn’t elite, learning is compassionate. Learning is understanding. Learning is empathy. Learning is apologies, and forgiveness, and moving forward together.

Truly, I don’t know what we do. I don’t have answers to these questions - I send them out into the ether, because if I don’t they will suffocate me. I send them out in the hopes that they won’t be forgotten, but repeated and thought on, and maybe, one day, answered. I don’t know what to do. But I’m not done trying.