YOUR TURN: Memorial Day, a time to honor the military, our planet
Happy end of May, Gaston County!
Wow, can you believe that Gaston County schools are done, and Memorial Day weekend is here? Time to kickoff summer, but as you have those celebratory cookouts remember that the actual meaning of the holiday is quite somber. The “memory” part of “Memorial” is for those soldiers that died in active military service. No matter what war or conflict, we can all agree that the sacrifice of one’s own life is the greatest price anyone can pay. There is no single act that is more finite. Therefore, as you gather with family or friends, take a moment to honor those men and women who put themselves in the service to our country and lost their lives.
Having children makes you view the world a little differently than the times when all your decisions (mainly) only impact your own life and its trajectory. Once kids are on the scene, your decisions are now amplified because those decisions affect many more people. I often think of those service men and women who are on active deployment and do not return home to their families or their own children. I think of those young men or women who have not yet had families of their own, but they are someone’s child. When that coffin is draped in an American flag, my heart aches because I have to believe that their loss was for something we cannot measure in currency or barrels. I pray that their sacrifice was to protect the values of freedom and democracy, to protect those that do not have protection. If there is a doubt, then I hope we can re-evaluate what we are fighting for.
I am always impressed by those soldiers that actively seek out the military job, with a sense of duty to country - they are truly heroes by their act of volunteering for service. We have so much to be grateful for that there are brave people willing to undertake some of the hardest work, and on Memorial Day, the least we can do is take a moment of silence during a picnic to thank those who gave their lives for us to have peaceful Monday holidays.
Too many conflicts involve control over natural resources.
Can you imagine the lives that would be spared if we had alternate ways of being self-sufficient and relying more on what we have at home? What would it look like if we did more to restore our own natural ecosystems to defend against geopolitical conflicts? It is predicted that with our increasingly warming climate there will be more conflicts over basic resources - not just energy - but food and water.
We are blessed with a large nation, peaceful neighbors, and still lots of freshwater, especially in the East. We are not, however, immune to climate change, and we shouldn’t expect that “someone” is going to fix it for us. We need to take action, and we need to do it now. We need our military to be prepared, and they are preparing more than most would know.
The Department of Defense knows that climate change is creating instability - the kinds that become easy to exploit from a security standpoint. When our bases are at risk from floods and wildfires, when our forces cannot train, these are problems that stretch beyond a narrow focus that “only environmentalists care about climate change.” There is a dangerous narrative out there encouraging apathy - it’s too big a problem to stop it, so why bother. Do not give up hope.
On this Memorial Day, we owe it to those people who put their lives on the line, and those that paid the price to know we care deeply about their sacrifice. We aren’t going to dishonor them by trashing our beautiful country, or polluting its air. We won’t be idle when we know there is hard work to do. They did it for us. Let’s do it for their families, for each other as US citizens. We share this place and time.
As always, I'm here to talk solutions. My email is becca.hurd@gastongov.com.
Becca Hurd is the recycling coordinator for Gaston County.
This article originally appeared on The Gaston Gazette: YOUR TURN: Memorial Day, a time to honor the military, our planet
