Every year in early May I pause to remember my father. Not because that was his birthday but because 80 years ago now, as a young adult of 22, he had to endure the greatest horrors of his life. As a conscript soldier he was stationed around the Grebbeberg, . The place where between May 11 and 13, 1940, over 400 Dutch soldiers died in an impossible battle against a much better organized, large and strong opponent. 

My father was, what he described later in life a world Christian. Thou shalt not kill was an important commandment for him. Eventually he was forced to choose, his life and the lives of others for the life of that young adult from the other camp. 

I know my father as someone who carried that with him every day, he had to live with that decision. It didn't dominate his whole life, later in his life he still found love from which I then sprang. I remember that he did not like to talk about time. Sometimes things did come up, often around May and then he would get busy and angry. He was then angry at the army leaders and officers who disappeared or could not be reached in the heat of battle, angry at the people who were welcomed as (resistance) heroes after the war. For him, there were no winners. 

With us as children, he never talked about his war time. I remember being about eight years old and finding a set of medals in a metal box in my father's closet. Obsessed with the experience of getting a medal for the Evening Walk, I secretly took the medals to school the next day. I proudly showed them off to the entire class without being aware of the significance of these medals of honor and the memories they would bring up in my father. My teacher understood this and called my parents about it. Back home I received punishment without explanation, not understanding that my father was not proud of his medals. Eventually I forgot about the incident until, during my high school years, I started doing a paper on World War II. My father generally talked about the war time but he never told about the real horrors, however, and I respected that. 

Now you and I live at a time when war language is increasingly being spoken. Young adults are being sacrificed all over the world for the ideals of often old men tainted by money, power and ego. If I want to be a good ancestor I cannot help but overcome my confusion. I wonder what human being has the right to call young people to war? Who invented that you can do this without consequences? That you can live with the knowledge that you are saddling anyone who survives the front with a lifetime of trauma? That as a politician or secretary general you demand billions to make even better bombs and unmanned drones that can then kill even more young people at once? That as a parent you resign yourself to the honor of heroism for people and homeland when your child has been snared?

I don't understand.

What have we done over the past 80 years?

Were we only concerned with securing our own skin in the form of house and pension? 

If I learn nothing from the past can I develop as a good ancestor?

I want to invite you to start acting freely, equally and together and live from love and trust. Join me in living from the inside out: so what I don't want to happen to me, may not happen to the other. To work like me on your self-awareness. Getting to know yourself without selfishness with just enough I. 

And share everything of value selflessly. So think about what is enough? What do you need in terms of roof over your head, food, love, meaning and connection?

Shall we start tomorrow? 

With one small step, every day, towards a human and Earth-worthy society.

Be a good ancestor.

Pieter Hessel / coexistence artist