It's not like the movies...
I can't stress enough how much we need to understand what is happening now in Myanmar on personal terms. Sometimes we can get caught up in the big sweeps of the events and news and forget the human toll, and lose sight of people just like us who are now being exposed to incomprehensible circumstances.
On this note, I want to share a short excerpt from a podcast that we will be releasing later this week. This is a vivid description of a young man sharing his feelings when first hearing the sound of bullets flying on the street. His vulnerability and honesty provide an unprecedented view for what it is like to be risking everything for freedom these days, and why it is so imperative we do what we can to support them.
“Everything was so fast. People were running, there were a lot of loud noises everywhere, and everything was so chaotic.”
“The first time I heard it, it is like, ‘bam, bam, bam, bam!’ I almost pissed my pants, to be perfectly honest. I wanted to run, but instead of running, I just sat down, because at that time, my legs cannot actually carry me. So I just dropped down on my knees and tried to breathe normally. And it wasn't like in the movies, where everything slows down. Everything was so fast. People were running, there were a lot of loud noises everywhere, and everything was so chaotic. And I just sat down on my knee. And I thought to myself, ‘Okay, so this is it. Now we're getting shot at. I don't know with what, but what am I going to do?’
And then I looked to my side, and what I saw was just people almost half my age, and some of them are actually girls. I'm going to use the word 'girls' here, because they aren't women yet. They look so young, like maybe 15 or 16 years old, girls and boys. They're actually ready to face what what's coming to them."