Isn't It Funny How the Night Moves

At night, on guard duty, the air is cooler and the breeze is refreshing. You have time to reflect. Time to think. You talk with the guy next to you about life, about goals and about the people you are thinking of back home. In these moments, gazing across the berm and the border right in front of you, you feel more alive. You feel like you've been transported home and your thoughts and dreams almost become a reality.

You're still just a kid but you experience adulthood when you're here - there's no avoiding it. The letdowns, the disappointments, the reality checks. The lose of friends, the fear, the pain. The sense of wonder you experienced as a kid is gone and it's replaced by a harshness that only reality can produce.

But at night on guard duty you can try to recapture what you feel you've lost. The dreams return, the future is just over the horizon and the sun never sets on dreams. They are out there just in front of you but for the moment just out of reach. You think about the things you will accomplish, the places you will visit and the opportunities you will be given.

It's ironic how this war and all the deep pain it's shown you and led you to experience gives you a hope for the future. A hope that maybe you never would have experienced back in the comforts of home, the security of family and the concerns of daily life. It's only through a sacrifice such as the one you are making that the true measure of a man can be found. It's only through sacrifice that you discover how truly precious life is and you come to understand how many wonderful years you still have to live. It sometimes takes many years for others to discover what you've discovered at such a young age.

War changes you, it's inevitable - it can't be denied. But then again, have you really changed? Or have you just been rearranged? You are still you. You will never see things the same way as those who have never experienced war. Your experiences change the way you view the world. It's how you deal with the difference that sets the course for the future. You come back a different man. You hope you're a better man. And you hope that the lessons you've learned aren't washed away by civilian life and that you can hold on to them.

But right now, as your eyes wander along the border, reality crawls back into your thoughts and push the dreams into the recesses of your mind. The night moves back in. You know they are still there. You'll bring them out again and play with them - maybe tomorrow night.

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It's seems that "leave" was a decade ago. While he was home, we had many hours to talk, and during our discussions some of the things he said continue to turn over in my mind. Today my thoughts went back to those things and I made an attempt at putting them down in black and white.