The cliché is true. When we have been hurt by others, we tend to become people who “share” our pain by inflicting it on the people around us. Hurt people truly hurt people.
Do you know when the last person died because of World War II? January. Yes, this January! January 4, 2014. Undetected, undetonated explosives triggered an accident that killed one and wounded thirteen in Euskirchen, Germany.
Do you know when the last person died because of World War I? Two weeks ago! It’s the same basic story. A bomb lay dormant for a century near Flanders fields in Belgium. It killed two construction workers.
Do you know when the last person died because of the American Civil War? It’s practically ancient history compared to the other two stories. It was in May of 2008, more than 140 years after the Appomattox Courthouse surrender. Sam White was restoring a cannon ball he had found. Something went wrong. The antique explosive was still powerful enough to send shrapnel over a quarter of a mile.
Each of these wars has long been over. The last World War I veteran died in February of 2012. To schoolchildren today, these are stories from the history books. Despite the passage of time, explosives still remain, ironically becoming more unstable as time passes.
These bombs make a pretty good analogy for how hurt people operate. Sometimes our wars are long past, but relics from our history show up and hurt the people close to us. We might not be fighting anymore, but the weapons are still within reach. Sometimes we’re not even aware that they’re buried where they are. Sometimes people can trigger those explosions without even realizing it. Hurt people hurt people. We need to be aware of the long-lasting effects of our pain and be on guard against these unseen dangers!