Ah, past times - and what do we learn?

Couldn't resist the temptation of LoTR tonight, and watched almost the whole thing. And it recalled my memories about the past times... oh dear, I think I was first drawn by this fascinating story when I was... in Form 5? I forgot, but it was one of the movies that drawn and touched me so much that I see the beauty in human, so much as the evil as well. Never have the determination to pick up the book, and this time it's too late - school has started. Boo.

Another past time... yes, it has been five years already, and I remembered I was somewhere in the wild having my first (and only) wildcamp that night. And the World Trade Center fell. Both towers. It came to us as a total shock but we were in an Outward Bound camp, meaning that we did not have television access until three days later. Five years... what has the world learnt? We had more wars than the 1990s, and we had more hatred and terrorist attacks around us. When will we learn the proper way of living peacefully with another race, with another people?

Peace has been restored in the Middle World under Tolkien's construction, with love and trust between the elves, humans, dwarfs, hobbits and wizards. Can we ever foster some love and trust between U.S. and the Middle East? I mourn for the civilian deaths - both in the U.S., Afghanistan and Iraq - because we are all humans. And we are meant to be equal and capable of co-existing peacefully.

While we claim ourselves civilized, does it only mean that we need not shed blood from our hands after killing because we can only press a button and kill many in thousands of miles away?