United We stand, Divided We Fall

If we join hands and stand united we can move mountains. If we unite, we can make the sun rise from the West……

By G.T.

(January 31, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Blood shed, pain, loss and anguish define today. This is what our world is made of at present. What is the spark which started this raging fire? The division among families, religions and nations. ‘Division,” a word made up of only eight letters is the cause of the unspeakable suffering that the people undergo every single second of their life. Sri Lanka is a country which holds the stench of conflict and war. Once a land which spoke of nature’s glory, today a land of blood and tears. Once known as the ‘pearl of the Indian Ocean’ today acknowledged as a ‘teardrop in the Indian Ocean’.

We who live in this country have to accept that Sri Lanka has become a place of destruction. Innocent people lose their lives, their homes, their loved ones, their riches and their land. For over half a century those in the North and East faced death, displacement and trauma. Recently those all over Sri Lanka have begun experiencing the bitterness of war. Would we have to go through this agony if we forget our differences and unite as one? Definitely not. ‘Unity” offers the splendour of freedom and the assurance of peace. Essays and poems take form, speeches ring out, songs and drama speak loud and clear emphasizing the immediate need for peace and unity. It is quite easy to create such masterpieces but quite hard to bring them into practice. If Sri Lanka’s citizens unite as children of one womb it is clear that the war would bury itself and the tree of peace would flourish with flowers of joy. Division is the soul reason for this conflict. Division should be demolished. People fail to understand that the blood in every body is the same. If only they realize that unmovable truth and unite as one would surely be living in paradise.

As citizens of Sri Lanka, we are dominated by the issues rising before our very eyes. All around, we see corruption and conflict that we fail to realize that almost every country in the world experiences a similar situation. The world itself is one home and the people are of one family, built within her womb mother earth wails over her divided children. “Conflict’ has gone beyond reasoning. The governments dominate the civilians and so this sort of idea in planted into every child’s thinking. But that is not so as civilians, as citizens of the world, as children of one mother, simply as human beings we have the power and responsibility; to create a world of harmony.

If we join hands and stand united we can move mountains. If we unite, we can make the sun rise from the West. If we unite we cannot be moved by any force. For that these ‘if’s’ must disappear. It must be realized by every single human that ‘unity’ is what we need; we have needed it for so long that we forgot about such a thing. We are of different races, religions, nations and languages but the truth is that we are all human remains. The truth that we were created by one God remains. This need to be the theme of every event, the chorus of every song, the title of every book, the message of every speech and each time a human heart beats; this should be the reason and purpose for that. If this can happen a change unimaginable will take place.

The conflict and division has to come to an end. Throughout history lives have been lost in vain. God can only take our lives away from us. Only God has the right to do that. Men cannot take their bothers’ lives. As humans we have a goal and obligation set before us and that is to achieve unity. Division has to be shattered into fragments. United we shall stand. Not a single force shall move us. Divided we fall. We are falling. Every second brings us closer to the final fall and if we fall that will be the full stop of every hope and dream that kept a single candle burning. That cannot happen. It should not happen. Unite as one and bring heaven on earth and peace among men.

Courtesy: Bishop’s College Magazine-Sri Lanka Guardian