I have two grandfathers. One lives on a farm in Iowa, a peaceful and beautiful place that I have loved to visit since childhood.
My other grandfather can’t count on having electricity in the dead of winter. He has to hide from missiles and drone strikes.
He lives in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, a country that has been fighting an existential war against Putin’s Russia since 2022.
I have sometimes reflected on how different life can be for different people. One lives in relative peace and security all their life; another might risk their life daily, not out of any desire to, but simply because they have no other choice.
I could have been born and raised in Ukraine. It’s not an unlikely counterfactual. My parents could have chosen to live there instead of the U.S.
Had that happened, my life would be very different right now. Instead of studying at a university and writing articles, I might be fighting on the front lines. Or I might be sitting in a dark, cold apartment, wondering if the air-raid sirens will go off.
I find such a counterfactual frightening.
All my life, I have taken for granted that no one is out to kill me. I have never worried that a drone will strike my home. I have never gone hungry or thirsty. My house has an excellent heating system. All the lights work.
I suspect most of my readers can say the same. In fact, I suspect that most of us — if not all of us — rarely think about the war in Ukraine, or the other conflicts around the world. It’s all too far away. It has minimal effect on our lives, and so it doesn’t seem very real.
But for many Ukrainians, it is all too real. And it is unlikely to end soon.
I do not write all this in the spirit of despair. Quite the contrary, I believe that to appreciate peace, we must be aware of how quickly it can dissolve into conflict.
For a Ukrainian like my grandfather, war has become part of his life.
I ask you who read this article to remember the immense privilege of living in America, and to spare a thought for those whose fate is different.
