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Drabble Corner

Michelle Swisz

Hello, everyone. I’m thrilled to be back doing Drabbles. Thanks for the letters in the meantime –– they’ve meant a lot.

The one topic that isn’t letting me go, the topic for this month, is peace. Not so much how to achieve it, but –– to begin with at least — what IS it in the first place? Is it just the absence of visible or perceptible fighting? And what about unarmed confrontation — is that to be considered to be fighting? How about presenting one’s position in a way that bothers others — is that the same thing as quarreling, and is THAT the same as fighting? It seems to me that peace is a lot more subjective than I thought it was.

Sometimes we hear that nobody wants war, and that we merely have different ways of going about trying to achieve peace. Some that say peace is achieved in part and necessarily by not showing up for the war; others say that people like Saddam have to be taken out because we can’t have peace with people like him around.

In our state of interdependence, can we have a way of life in which we can choose to make a stand for anything at all, without risking and even inviting confrontation? Would a life in which we could tolerate and transcend if necessary any differences between us be a life we would find to be meaningful? If not, can we change such that we would find such a life to be meaningful? Our topic, should you decide to accept this challenge, is Peace.

Drabble guidelines in a nutshell: 100 words exactly, sent to Drabble@wvu.org in the body of an email, and sent by the 10th of the month prior to the month of its prospective publication. We also have Dribbles! A dribble is one sentence of any reasonable length written in response to the last Drabble that was published.

It’s so good to be back — please send any questions, comments, or other feedback to Drabble@wvu.org. Thanks, everyone.