World War Nothing

I live in an unincorporated part of King County, Washington. Because of this, last night, my neighborhood sounded something like I imagine a war zone to sound like - the same way it does every Fourth of July (although they may have some ringers in last night - they'd dialed it up a notch). Now, I say "Imagine," because the closest that I've ever been to a war zone is a night confidence course. So I don't actually know what one sounds like.

And this was on my mind last night as I sat on my bed and listened to the thumps, booms and rumbling echoes (the nearby hillside is good for this) of my neighbors enjoying themselves by blowing up small packets of explosives and colored pyrotechnics. Despite the mayhem going on outside my window, I had no worries. I could piggyback on the local festivities without fear or flashbacks and turn in without needing to wait for them to run out of ordinance. And this is a stroke of good fortune that not everyone shares in.

And that realization left me with the nagging question of "How can I share this? How does one go about creating a world without war?" Of course, better people than I have tried and failed to achieve this goal, and I wouldn't know where to begin. And so I filed it away, as the crackle and pop of the fireworks drifted in through the open window, to placed on the pile of issues to be whittled down to a manageable size. Later, when I figure out where I'd find a big enough knife.