This blog-post already makes me laugh even before I’ve typed the first letter for it. It’s because the title alone but also the accompanying photo are so misleading…and yet also so wonderfully and strangely connected with each other.
The whole story around it all started with a fight I had with a neighborhood boy during my early school days, many many years ago. It wasn’t the first one, I should note but during this one I realized that none of it would ever have a truly satisfying ending for any of us two kids. After each arguments there would be another one already waiting around the corner. We would endlessly circle around who’s the strongest of us followed by plans on how to take revenge yet again. Back then I thought there had to be more to life than always having to assert oneself. Running away, making some kind of “pseudo peace” – none of which would last. Eventually, over the follwowing two decades, I became somewhat of a phlegmatic person, a Dudeist, or whatever you want to call it. Certainly that’s also quite a good life philosophy (one that has often served me and others well over the years) but despite all of this, I had to keep admitting to myself that deep down…when it came to deeper, more serious conflicts…I remained just as helpless, powerless, and devoid of ideas as before. A sad realization.
And then something happened! In Colombia! A television documentary aired about the country’s new government and how they dared to try a new approach with the decades-long conflict with the FARC rebels entrenched in the country. Instead of letting weapons do the talking, they sought a new direction for peace, using humanistic messages instead. So instead of military strategists, they hired advertising agencies. And so, among many others, “Operation Christmas” was conceived and executed. Military helicopters wouldn’t fly combat-ready soldiers into the jungle, but – around Christmas time – lit Christmas trees that were decorated with the following, simple message:
“If Christmas can come to the jungle, you too can come home. Demobilize. At Christmas, everything is possible.”
The plain, statistical result of the operation: compared to the previous year, the number of FARC fighters who decided to lay down their arms increased by around 30 percent. So, there it was. Something different. Something that actually worked. In real life.
That hit my weak spot again and I wanted to fully engage with this topic—to get involved, see more, learn more, and maybe even help shape it. But somehow I always ended up at a dead end. Whether it was almost enrolling at an Austrian university to study Peace Research & Peacebuilding – which unfortunately was only a minor and not major subject there and thus no real option to consider for me. Or that time when I wanted to get involved with the Peace Movement in Austria – to finally find like-minded people and so on. Sadly, it turned out that the real Peace Movement in Austria has vanished a long while ago and that all other organisations, that claimed to be the new Peace Movement, were hardly interested in the topic of real Peacebuilding at all. So again, nothing came to light back then.
But now, so many years later, that topic has resurfaced and finally and unexpectedly it all seems to have come full circle.
Through my trip to America to visit Sarah, after a museum visit in Queens dedicated to peace and equality, a contact was made, and I received an invitation to Vienna to meet regularly with friends at the offices of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation – to exchange thoughts about life, peace and much more.
It’s inside that office where there’s a clock hanging on the wall. One without a battery, symbolically set to Five Minutes before Twelve. A time I previously used to associate solely with Armageddon, The End of the World or whatnot else, heavily depressing. But a few things have changed recently. A certain balance has formed. Because even though there are still countless, legitimate reasons of why this very specific time holds great symbolic meaning – it’s not just that anymore. Now I know that there are actually quite a few people out there who are collectively dealing with these topics in a different, fresh and positive fashion – way, way off the so common reflex that violence needs to be always countered solely with yet more…violence. Not being completely alone anymore feels good.