Not-Sketchblog 15: True Christmas

"No man is a failure who has friends."
This quote from It's A Wonderful Life has become my life.
It has embodied my beliefs and my goals,
and I want to pass along something valuable to you on this day of celebration.
It is something I learned from suddenly realizing a connection between this quote and a very famous historic event.

The historic even to which I refer has a book based off of it,
and is called the Christmas Truce.
The Christmas Truce took place in the midst of the First World War,
when soldiers fought without understanding and without hope.
On Christmas Eve, on the Western Front in Belgium,
German and British (and some French) soldiers,
absolute enemies,
laid down their arms,
came together,
and celebrated the holiday.
They even played soccer together.

It is a shining example of the hope that humanity still has for peace.
It proves that even the most bitter of enemies can find common ground and live together in harmony.

This is what the holiday is truly about.
It is about the potential success of humanity.

Christians celebrate the holiday because of the birth of Jesus,
the savior and symbol of hope for mankind.
Jesus preached a very important message,
and that message can be boiled down to one word:
LOVE.

If you are to celebrate this holiday,
please remember it in this way.

There is love still in humanity's heart.
There is still hope for us.
We must learn to lay down our hatred,
lay aside apathy, anger, jealousy, selfishness,
and all forms of such things,
and come together as one race to reach for a new goal:
peace and harmony.

We fight senseless wars,
bicker in pointless arguments,
and throw away priceless friendships
because of fleeting, poisonous feelings.

We need to realize that it has to stop before we cannot turn back.
There is still hope.

As for myself,
I have decided I will not stop fighting.
I have faced my fears and battled with them for the past three years,
and I may not have completely overcome them,
but I am near to victory.
And so I will not stop fighting.
I will fight paranoia, fear, loneliness, and all my feelings of betrayal,
to have faith in those I love,
and those who do not love me.

I will hold onto the lingering flicker of hope,
and work to build it into a raging fire.

I vow here and now to lay aside myself,
as others have before me,
in order to save humanity from itself.

And now I ask that you join me.
Join me and lay down your weapons of
hatred,
selfishness,
bitterness,
apathy,
loneliness,
depression,
anger,
frustration,
hopelessness,
addiction,
sorrow,
hurt...

and take up the arms of Love.

Help me save humanity.

There is still hope.


Love and peace to you this holiday season,
Emily J Sampson


p.s. To those that felt they had no choice but to burn bridges,
this is my formal plea for a Christmas truce.
But please, let us not let this last only one day,
but let it live on through eternity.
Let us rebuild those bridges to form a stable and solid future for mankind.
For our children, and our children's children.
Hear my plea.

There is still hope.