This was written on April 30, 1985.
“ Vietnamese are rather private on the matter of the Vietnamese experience. Before reading on, I must warn you of the emotionality that comes from this writing. So, if you live only by rationality and logic and cannot accept the externalization of emotional expressions, you may resent this view. But then, what other means of communication can I use except the one that will go directly to the heart? Gratitude is a very emotional experience and it is spoken in a language that only the heart can understand.
I came originally from Vietnam, that land where each one of you, my dear Vietnam Veteran, has shed his tears of joy and sorrow; left his sweat and blood; experienced despair and hope, love and hatred, trust and distrust, fear and courage- the whole spectrum of conflicting human emotions.
Can it ever be said the Vietnam War was a useless war?
No, it was not, because it has made each one of us, who was there, a better person, more sensitive to human needs, more compassionate to human misery and more tolerant towards human failures. But, then, you might retort, you are Vietnamese and we are Americans. Our views are not the same, we are different.
Are we really? Isn’t it true that each one of us goes through life, despite the color of our skins, the way we dress or the way we think, still moved by the same emotions? I have seen extreme human misery, whether it was in the form of human limbs strewn all over the rice paddies; whether it was of a ghostly convoy of stretchers with blood in different convulsive contortions or whether it was of the innocent smile of a child among the orphans, oblivious to the precarious physical security of the orphanage.
Such exposure will render any person, very sensitive and very acutely aware of the importance of living, of learning and, most of all, of giving. It is certainly a rich spiritual experience.
Surely, through that paradoxical situation, one realizes the God of benevolence, of caring, of sharing. In brief, the God of Love. True, if it had not been for the realization of one’s own human insignificance and the fragility of one’s own existence, how else would one then have realized the existence of something eternal, perfect and absolute?
| Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: | View all related messages |
For a complete listing of article comments, questions, and other discussions related to lana lebozec's Vietnam topic, please visit the Discussions page.