What is both heartbreaking and reassuring about humanity is that it is constantly renewing itself. Already, whole generations of adult and vaccinated adults were born after the sadly fateful day of September 11, 2001. On that day, as little as we remember, the sky was blue. And the sun, dazzling. The impact of the kamikaze planes had been all the more striking and the pain caused, all the greater. Some had decreed, in the days of endless mourning that followed, that America had just lost its innocence…
With the war in Ukraine, which gives us the impression of having returned to the time of barbarism, it is once again innocence that is being shattered every day before our eyes. This ingredient which is the very foundation of creation, which is transmitted from generation to generation and which constantly redefines who we are. With the difference that this time, innocence is shattered at the infernal pace of a conflict that is broadcast to us simultaneously: live on our screens, live in our plexuses! There is no longer that distance which once allowed us to be saddened from afar. Distress and destruction now appear closer, clearer, more real. Which is both good and bad news.
A good one because it allows us — in addition to raising awareness among a greater number — to empathize directly with the victims who are no longer completely alone. For lack of being able to take refuge quickly among us, men and women who live in hell now see us walking symbolically by their side, crying with them, giving an ovation to the one who best defends them and who nevertheless remains, him, the loneliest ruler on the planet. On the other hand, this proximity puts us all face to face with the inevitable: a feeling at the antipodes of the power that is at work. A bottomless feeling of helplessness, specific to all crushed humanity, each time a man gone mad decides to mark history in the worst possible way.
We then say to ourselves that it will take a long time to restore the evil which, in the meantime, is corrupting what humanity conceals most preciously, namely this innocence which allows us to hope, to believe in it again and again, to advance against all odds.