I just watched a BBC report on the bombings in Ukraine. In the video, we see a bombed-out house and a young woman being pulled from the ruins alongside her husband; both are covered in dust and debris to the point of being unrecognizable. The father is screaming in heartbreak, while the mother stares with a vacant, numb expression. Then, it is briefly mentioned that they are the parents of a nine-year-old girl who did not survive the bombing. A body bag is shown; her grandparents are weeping.

The report then shifts to Trump, who is doing business with Putin and blaming Zelenskyy for the war and rising diesel prices.

I am so grateful that I discovered a different way of life many years ago; otherwise, I would be driven to despair by anger and grief. It still breaks my heart every time I see people killing one another and justifying it, yet I also view it within a broader context. I have learned to let in the silence, allowing it to wash away the thoughts that weigh on me.

The fact is, I have never understood—and still do not understand—how people can justify the manufacture of lethal weapons and the act of killing. From a purely logical standpoint, I hear their arguments and can even understand them to some extent; yet, it is incomprehensible to me how someone can be so alienated from this world—from nature, living beings, and fellow humans—that they can actually carry this out, helping to destroy things and extinguish human lives, or life itself.

I cannot understand the people who stand for this, and there are so many of them. Their numbers are overwhelming, and this fact has repeatedly left me feeling utterly powerless. There are pacifists, of course, but they strike me as too radical. After all, I don’t know what I would do in the heat of the moment—in a flash of anger and fear, in the face of immediate danger or a direct attack. In such a moment, I would likely strike back; I might even kill.

But building bombs and weapons, aiming them at others and using them, dropping munitions on people and cities, laying mines—all of that is a crime, a premeditated act of murder. Murder.

I cannot fathom how so many people stand for murder—to defend borders, to conquer territory, or even just to prepare for an attack.

Yes, I, too, feel that prickle of fear when I toy with the idea of us not arming or equipping ourselves, only to be invaded, enslaved, and killed by some insane, psychopathic ruler. Yes, I feel that instinct for self-preservation and the dread of being wiped out by brutal murderers.

And yet, I do not want to contribute to it myself. Somewhere, it has to stop. Even if our own annihilation is the consequence. Right? Oh, I don’t know anymore.

Perhaps my instinct for self-preservation is flawed, then. Perhaps. Because everything in me screams “no” to calculated murder. No matter what.