Radovan Karadzic, Sarajevo is not your city, and you have no right to say that it is, just as you do not have the right to say in public, even if it’s in court, that someone has dug up bones around Bosnia and brought them to Srebrenica to make a fake graveyard. This is insulting.
Past, Present and Future, Revisited
Sarajevo | 03 August 2009 | By Srecko Latal
Srecko Latal
Giggling children on bicycles, haughty bikers on their roaring steeds and beautiful women on their high heels all mingled along city’s main streets. Scents of strawberry and chocolate ice cream, popcorn, perfumes and motor exhaust fumes mixed into the enchanting aroma of a Sarajevo summer night.
The heat was becoming unbearable indoors so I gave my family marching orders towards the nearest park. My wife started the delicate, everlasting and not-to-be-interrupted dressing-up and making-up ritual. Our son aged three-and-a-half occupied himself with his makeshift set of drums to the immense joy (read despair) of most of the family and neighbours.
I decided to use my remaining time and sanity to watch at least first few minutes of the evening news. That was not such a good idea. Footages of memorial services and pictures of unearthed skulls and bones pierced through my good mood and brought me back into a different reality.
I surfed the channels but, wherever I went, it was all the same. The main part of most of the news shows was dedicated to some anniversary of some massacre being commemorated somewhere by some politicians. From World War II offensives to the 1992-5 war massacres, it seemed that there was not a day in a year in which somewhere back in the history of this country someone didn’t kill someone else.
The contrast between the somber TV reports and chirpy life taking place outside my window on the bustling streets of Sarajevo made me think. Which was the real reality?
Are we stuck in endlessly reliving our past traumas and horrors? Or are we allowed to have “normal lives,” going to swimming pools after work and to parks, parties, cafés or discos in the evening? Can these realities co-exist at the same time, or do different people make different choices over whether they will live in the past, present or future?
I had my share of traumas and horrors, before, during and after the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. For years, wherever I went, I carried my ghosts with me; recollections of my troubled past. Yet, over time, I realised that those ghosts from the past were not allowing me the good, decent life I wanted to have in the present. The two simply could not coexist inside me at the same time.
So I have made a conscious decision to start living in the present. This did not mean I had to forget all of those episodes from the past. Nor did it mean that I had to forgive past wrongs. Mostly, it meant accepting that those episodes, however difficult and hard, had a higher purpose. Now I realise that those past experiences were meant to be, in order to make me the better man that I am today.
Call it destiny, fate, or kismet; it really doesn’t matter. I just know that I am grateful to the Maker (however you call Him/Her) for giving me the strength and wisdom to take this new path.
I know many people, even among my friends and family, whose ghosts from the past are so strong and whose horrors are so unbearable so as to keep them from the present. These traumas are not only war-related. They may be linked to childhood, first love or some other first big disappointment.
Some of these people live firmly entrenched in the past. They keep reliving traumas and dwelling on their last happy moments before tragedies occurred. Others have tried to escape into the future. Too much fear, pain or confusion seem to keep them away from both the past and the present, so they keep on living in endless plans, hopes and dreams for their future.
After all these years I have come to my own conclusion; a human being cannot live in parallel realities. It is our own choice – that is both a blessing and a curse – which moment in time we want to dwell in.
I am still learning to accept my own ghosts from the past. I am also learning to accept other people, even when they make choices that are different from my own. Although it sometimes hurts, I am learning to respect when people dear to me choose to live in the past or in the future and miss out on all the joy and glory of the present.
And so I sat in the living room, staring blankly at the evening news on the TV, carried away by this philosophical discourse within my own head. My wife and kid were ready a long time ago and were already becoming jittery. So I turned off the TV and we strolled to the nearest park, enjoying the soothing evening breeze and the sweetness of the strawberry ice cream.
But an icy-cold spot was still there, throbbing at the bottom of my stomach. I could not get rid of my thoughts about the past, present and future.
After contemplating the personal choices that we all make for ourselves, I now started thinking about the effect that our personal choices – when joined and multiplied by other peoples’ choices – have on our environment, cities, countries, continents and the world in which we live.
A few years after the war, I had a feeling that things in Bosnia and Herzegovina were finally changing. I had the feeling that more and more people were leaving their ghosts from the past behind and were moving to the present, or at least were trying to build plans for the future. This change was reflected on the country and the world around me and they appeared to me more vibrant, vivacious and optimistic than they had in a long, long time.
But the days of human stupidity, selfishness and resentment seem to have returned. Why? That may be a good theme for another blog, but suffice to say that we all bear our own share of responsibility for whatever situation we live in. Either by doing, or not doing, what we should, we seem to be dragging ourselves, this country and this world, back down to a bottomless pit.
I wish it was all my imagination but it seems to me that more and more people are getting reacquainted with their old ghosts. It seems that more and more people abandon the joy of the present and return under the dark umbrella of their past fears, pains and confusions. And the whole world looks more somber and sad.
I choose to continue living in the present because I have learned that there is nothing good for me in the past. And I still do my best to accept others who make different decisions – because they too are part of my present.
If you have stayed with me through this text until the end, you may wonder whether I am smart, or stupid, enough to try to offer a piece of personal wisdom on how to get out of this situation and change things for better.
Instead, I will offer you a piece of wisdom from the old traditions and reflected in proverbs that many countries and regions share; never do to others what you wouldn’t want others to do to you. That would certainly do for starters.
2009-08-03 16:55:20