Land Mines

Afghanistan or Iraq…Colombia or Cambodia… if one finds themselves on a playground in any of these sovereign states they may just as well be standing in their shoe leather (or not) on an old, yet still active mine field.  If anything disproves the old adage that “what you can’t see can’t hurt you”, land mines explosively disrupt this terrible misconception – pun intended.  If anything causes me to resonate with astronauts who have the opportunity gaze down on our planet and see the beautiful landscape, not interrupted by conventionally derived artificial geo-political borders and wish for the dismantling of synthetic boundaries we have created and racist attitudes that fuel them, land mines pique this sentiment.  Not merely deceptive, but deadly, they are placed strategically, or not, to cause surreptitious injury.  They do have a curious prerogative of evoking heroes on a battlefield, that is, those self-sacrificial men who are willing to give their last breath to dive on top of land mine so that their fellow troops may escape unscathed (this reality of a hero puts to shame what we have begun to call heroic activity in our society, which involves men getting breast implants and wearing dresses).  If something no bigger than a lunchbox can render a tank incapacitated or destroyed, we would be wise to be wary of hidden traps in our own battle, however small they may seem.  You cannot scoop hot coals into your lap and not be burned.