I make it a point to go to the Cenotaph every Remembrance Day.
For me, today is one of the most important days of the year. It reminds me that the peace and prosperity we enjoy has been bought and paid for and that we must be vigilant to preserve it.
Remembrance Day also reminds me of the mere triviality of many of my worries. The people who provided us this peace did so selflessly. They suffered lost years, lost innocence, lost limbs and lost lives. They saw the horrors of war; horrors we dare not imagine. These images haunt them and not us.
And all they ask is that we remember; not their glory, but their sacrifice. They ask us to remember so our societies can be more vigilant than the leaders of their times and avoid the calamities they endured.
Peace HAS a price. And vigilance is less expensive than the alternative. There were then as there are now people ruled by an ideology of intolerance and hatred and greed and avarice. They are inclined to destroy us if we let them. We can fight them now, or we can fight them later at a far higher price.
This is their lesson.
