There has been a lot about Ukraine in our news recently. The country is never forgotten, but I’ve heard and seen its name a little more often over the last day or two. The difficulty is that when the media spotlight sharpens its focus, it’s hard to look, and hard to look away.

The human cost of this war is truly shocking, and the price is being paid by both sides. Already there are thousands of bereaved families and thousands of amputees, and yet still bodies are flung towards each other, tasked with the deadly burden of advancing.

As I carry on with my daily niffnaff far from Ukraine, I struggle to imagine these blood-soaked lands, Ukraine’s and others, where bombs fall into buildings, soldiers serve, families crumble, and so many brutalised bodies lose their minds. How is it that we are all under the same sky, and yet we are unable to co-exist in peace and respect?

Should we not listen to each other a little harder? Try to hear each other a little better? Force ourselves to keep our attention nailed to the hope that evenutally our compassion might prove stronger than our greed, our pride, our cruelty?

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023