A war, you would have to pass

When the generation that lived through the Civil War saw us dawdling with food on the table, they lost patience and would say: "You should have gone through a war." It was a serious expression, laden with anger and frustration. It wasn't the time to answer anything, because that wasn't just another little battle, but the verbalization of the trauma of having known what it is to go hungry.For the moment, most of us continue not to go hungry (though queues can be seen at social centers and churches), but we have been experiencing wars for years now. Large-scale war, and quite close to home, has already become the constant framework within which our lives are unfolding. And the roar of conflicts is felt ever closer. And their effects, in our pockets or spirits, too. The survival kit was much more than advice for alarmists. How long will it be possible to continue leading this dual life, more or less normal and with future plans, if we live surrounded by fires?We are witnessing the atavistic struggle for political and economic power, but with an exponential killing capacity, which mixes war and spectacle, while we become impoverished and our prospects are impoverished. There is a hunger for certainties, for not going backwards, for not being cannon fodder at the orders of obscene politicians. There is a desire for effort to be recognized, for public discourse not to make reality even more obscene, for our children not to be forced to become cynics. There is a desire to ask ourselves who benefits from the return of war, even when it seemed that the last one had been a sufficiently dissuasive warning that the next one could be with stones.