The Reason for the Season?

I can remember being upset over the commercialization of Christmas. That so much time and energy was spent on things and advertising and "buy this" and "buy that". All that it gets from me this year is a shoulder shrug. It's not because I'm here in Iraq and away from it all, it's more like, "Who cares anyway?"

I mean, if Jesus was only relegated to a season, there might be a cause for being upset that his position was usurped by Santa Claus, Rudolph, Frosty, Christmas trees and presents. But he's not and those things are.

Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality is a term used to describe technology used to digitally recreate things that are encountered in everyday life, or even not-so-everyday life. And these experiences can be made to seem to happen as if we were far away from our actual location. The point is that the things are made to appear as real as possible while they lack the very life of the things they attempt to portray.

I think that life can often be like that, often trying to recreate the things that we know are real but that often end up being lifeless imitations. What if this life was merely a virtual reality "veil" placed over our eyes temporarily? If its very reality could be questioned, then none of these things that happen to me, no matter how "real" they seem, can threaten the real me.

The Old Life Is Dead

Operation Iraqi Freedom is named because it is believed that we are freeing the Iraqi people from one way of life in order that they might experience another way of life. It is believed that only by our continued existence here can they improve their life to something that we believe it should be and that many of them even hope it will be, but the longer we stay, the more we subject them to rules that are designed to control them, and even the more some Iraqis subject their countrymen to new rules and laws in the hope that they will succumb to the realization that the "freedom" of democracy, or perhaps some other form of government is much better than any other and the hope that they will at some point begin to act the way we want them to so that they can finally "be free".

The truth is that they are already freed from Saddam. Not, only when the last vestiges of all that remains of his government is hunted down and captured, or killed, and they finally begin to have a democratic form of government, but right now--he no longer has rule over them. That old life is dead and even if what exists afterwards seems to resemble it, the truth is real; it is gone.