Alumni Blog

Everything can be good in theory, but living life is a lot more difficult than that!

Jillian shares about the complexity of living conflict.

Before leaving Canada, I knew the very basics of where I was going / what I was doing… I knew the town I was moving to had been through a war and was divided. But what does that mean? The war in GVU is not just history, today it means when I walk out my door I see bullet holes still in the houses. Many people didn’t understand why they were fighting, they just fought because they thought, “If I didn’t shoot your family, you will shoot my family!” There are some amazing people here who want to bridge the division, but then there are others who are stuck and simply don’t want to move on. When I think about all this it makes me angry and then I try to challenge these thoughts and ask myself how I would feel if “they” shot and killed one of my family members? How would I act? I don’t know, maybe the same way? And that upsets me even more. I would like to think I could move on, but I can’t pretend it would be easy. Everything can be good in theory, but living life is a lot more difficult than that. I can’t say I’ve completely changed my views this summer, but I have built on them and I watched them expand, with the hope that this process will continue throughout my life (Jillian, STU/Bosnia ‘09).