This is a war story. A brief one.
Those three words – Nobody likes me – echoed silently as my five-year-old daughter, legs swinging off a park bench, stared at the ground. I had just picked her up from pre-school.
"Why do you say that?" I asked.
"Nobody will play me," said this sharp, gregarious firecracker of a kid. I didn't believe her, thought she was probing for some sympathy, probing for attention.
"Why would you say that?"
"Because I don't like guns," was her response, head bowed, the sorrow, the pain, undeniably real.
Because she didn't like guns.
I pressed. She explained:
The boys like to shoot. They want me to be dead. They want me to shoot back. But it scares me. They shoot me and say Play soldier. And I say no. And they say We don't like you. Go away.
They shoot me and say 'Play soldier.'
Today, Brown University released a study that estimated 225,000 lives lost and approximately $4 trillion in spending on post-9/11 wars. Estimates that FAR EXCEED those that have been presented thusfar.
And those are the costs that can be calculated. Tabulated. Systematized.
But there are additional societal costs, humanitarian costs, that can never be measured. Will never be measured.
Nobody likes me. Because she won't play war.
This is why I "fight" against conflict. And why I'm proud of my daughter. Five years old. For not giving in.