The Easter Bombings, 7 Months On: WHY Sri Lanka!
So, this is actually something that I wrote about a month after the April attacks, but never got around publishing. It is more than Seven months now, but I am sure that for most of us (who remember), the question still looms…why did they have to bomb Sri Lanka???
Beneath all the chaos, one question we are all asking ourselves is…WHY SRI LANKA!!!???
Looking at these photos of all the gestures of Solidarity shown by so many countries have shown towards Sri Lanka, it kinda makes sense…why Sri Lanka!
Apart from the fact that our land has been blessed with an abundance of Natural Beauty…throughout the centuries, Sri Lankans have been a people of great tolerance and hospitality. We have managed to (for the best part) treat foreigners with respect and humility (we are absolute Assholes to our fellow countryman though..and that’s Sad). But this is essentially why Sri Lanka is loved all over the world. I think that tourists came to Sri Lanka for the first time for the Country but they kept coming back for the People!
The fact that we are laidback, easygoing and are known around the world as a general ‘nice guy of countries’ probably pisses off many fundamentalist and extremists. Those guys don’t like nice and easygoing…they want blood and carnage.
Essentially, they want us to Change…change who we are, how we do things and how we treat each other. And looks like they are succeeding. We have changed who we are because we are now afraid, we have changed how we do things because we are now afraid, we are treating each other with suspicion because we are now afraid. Fear is a primal instinct focused solely on survival. That is why fear is responsible for almost all ‘emotional hijackings’.
We need to rise above this Fear, the anger, the pain and the perceived hatred and most certainly, the politics. Not because we are not angry…because we ARE! Not because we are not afraid…because we ARE! Not because we follow a certain ideology, faith or religion, not because we don’t have the right to be political, not because we can’t stand for what we believe in and certainly not because we are not hurt.
We need rise above this because, after a 30 year old Civil war…we owe to ourselves…and we owe it to each other! We owe it to all the innocent people who died and all the soldiers who died.
Bombs Kill people Once…but extremism and terrorists keep killing the ones left behind everyday. We need to mindfully look at what we have become, what we are doing and how we are treating each other.
Let’s stop asking why we were attacked and start asking how we have overcome!
