Reality Check: This is what the world is.

God, something's really hit me in the heart.Gulf News tabloid has this weekly thing where they publish posts from blogs written by Middle East nationals. Not for them those self-ranting blogs that we write, we who live in metropolitan cities and crib about exams and traffic woes and heartbreaks. No, some of these hit you and bring you back to reality like nothing else. Mostly they're about Dubai, rants, as I'd call them, but what I read yesterday really shook me.

Diary of a Palestinian Mother

The Gaza Genocide
We celebrated Yousuf's fourth birthday today. We ate cake. And we counted the bodies. We sang happy birthday. And my mother sobbed. We watched the fighter jets roar voraciously on our television screen, pounding street after street; then heard a train screech outside, and shuddered. Yousuf tore open his presents, and asked my mother to make a paper zanana, a drone, for him with origami; And we were torn open from the inside, engulfed by a feeling of impotence and helplessness; fear and anger and grief; despondence and confusion.

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And there's a photo there, of relatives of a Hamas Fighter, mourning at his funeral. And as happens to me a lot, the words I write fail to do justice to what I'm feeling.
These are the brave ones. These are the ones who have every right to complain about their misfortune. These live unpredictable lives, hanging by a thread, they are the ones who truly do not know if there will be a tomorrow. Their lives, their homes and their happiness can be wiped out in a matter of minutes, so effortlessly, by bombs dropped by people who probably don't care, people who're just following orders.
These are the ones who have every right and opportunity to break.
And yet they don't.

These have seen and experienced more hardship than we ever will. They are the strong ones, the ones we need to admire and the ones we need to learn from. People like us, we'll never truly understand what it is to be them, the ones who live in the midst of war.

From them we must learn
To be thankful for every new day that we're alive, thankful that we are sane, full and healthy.They can't take this for granted, for they never know when it will all be whisked away.To see the little joys in our lives for these matter more than the large sorrows.Butterflies, the laugh of a baby, purring cats, pictures in the cloudsWe must learn to shift our focus to the good in our lives.We know we're lucky. Somewhere at the back of our mind, we know. But things like this make it really hit you.

I'm sorry I'll never be able to understand what it's like to live among pain and still find happiness, to live, being grateful for each and every minute of your live, to smile for your child when your heart's breaking, to tell him you'll be safe when you yourself aren't sure.....
I bow my head to you.
I have much to learn from you, Mother From Gaza.