For Love and Peace

Most of you know that, in our before Covid life, I loved to travel. Seeing new places always intrigues and uplifts me, also makes me aware how we are all connected. I love that feeling of oneness. 

There have been only two places that have been to that left me with a different feeling of deep sadness. 

One was Sarajevo. In that beautiful city with its beautiful people, I experienced a different sadness that seemed to still linger in that city, and I had one of the most restless nights of my life without almost any sleep. My prayers are always with Sarajevo.

The second place was a museum. 

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. 

I have been to Japan many times and my visit to Hiroshima was on my fourth or fifth visit to Japan. I had been to a Lions Club Convention in Fukuoka and after the convention, we were travelling in Japan with the Turkish Delegation. When we arrived in Hiroshima that day in July 2016, I was moved in general to visit to this city, and yet I was happy to be able to visit this city and in a way, I am not sure how to express this properly, but I was happy to be able to have the chance to to send love and blessings to this city that has been through great suffering. 

The city seemed to have a gentle energy and I was amazed at how peaceful and pleasant the city was given what it had been through.

Yet, what I would experience shortly would be drastically different.

We were to visit the Peace Memorial Museum. 

Shortly after we entered the Museum building and started to look at the exhibits, I stared to feel this strange rush of feelings. Feelings of pain, of sadness that seemed to overwhelm me. It took me a while to understand what I was feeling and experiencing. It felt like I was suffocating. 

I drank a little water and not to disturb anyone I decided to move a little faster. We were a group of almost 100 people, yet the feeling was getting stronger and stronger. I realized that I was not able to look at the images and exhibits any more. It was just too much. 

And I found myself almost runnig out of the building.

I still remember as I went down some stairs and outside, it felt as if I was running for my life. And I also still remember the relief that I felt as I was finally outside.

It took me a few minutes to collect myself, trying to understand what had just happenned.

After about five minutes, I looked at my phone to check the time. I had over half an hour before we were to get together with our group. And I spent the next half hour strolling in the Memorial Park in which the Museum was located. At one point, I found myself looking at the Atomic Bomb Dome from a distance, the only building that was left standing from the 1945 explosion, which was now a World Heritage Site. What I was feeling or rather experiencing at that point was more of an incomprehension. Incomprehentsion of what had taken place and how it could have. 

I love being in Japan. It is one of the places that I feel most peaceful and happy. The gentleness and kindness that I experience there, with people that know and that I do not know is so comforting, it is impossible not to miss that feeling.

On this anniversary day of one the most heartbreaking days of human history, my heart and soul wishes and prays for peace for all on our beautiful planet.