If we are not talking about the conflict, and the unimaginable horror of it, we are thinking about it. The rest just seems gibberish
When you have known someone for a long time, you can cover a lot of ground extremely fast. I met a friend of 30 years, by the recycling bins. She had just been on the phone to someone who was going with a fleet of ambulances to Ukraine, and had asked her to go with them. “I was just saying ‘yes’, when my phone ran out of battery. Then I realised that I don’t have a skill set for this. No nursing training. I haven’t driven since I was 11. Imagine how embarrassing that would be; driving across five countries and you can’t even take over for two hours. I don’t even have the competence to keep my phone charged when I’m right next to some electricity.” We just stood for a bit and boggled at the unimaginability of that idea. You might accidentally agree to drive into a war zone, having forgotten that you couldn’t drive, and that doomed enterprise was only averted because you’d forgotten to charge your phone. But the whole thing is unimaginable.
It turns out it is possible to veer, all day long, between very strong emotions: impotent compassion, guilt and anger. Rage is the convenient feeling, more energising than compassion and much more comfortable than guilt. That’s why you always end up hating someone if you wrong them. Your infinitely creative brain finds a reason that it’s their fault.
