“All war must be just the killing of strangers against whom you feel no personal animosity; strangers whom, in other circumstances, you would help if you found them in trouble, and who would help you if you needed it.”

These are the words of Mark Twain, who was a brilliant writer of disturbing truths that made people in power in his day turn their heads the other way.

When an airplane pilot drops a bomb upon a building populated with men, women and children, I wonder what goes through his mind. Perhaps he feels what Twain said, that “all war must be just the killing of strangers.”

But then the pilot flies his war machine back to his homeland and calls his wife and tells her that he was happy to follow his orders to help destroy an enemy that is a threat to the manner in which the people of his country want to live their lives.

I have often thought that anyone can justify an egregious act against another person. One man murders another. He feels no remorse. In his mind and for whatever reasons, the victim deserved to die. A woman steals money from somebody’s bank account. She needed the cash to go on a lavish vacation she felt she deserved. A drug dealer takes a hundred dollars from an addict who dies from an overdose later that night. So be it, says the dealer. He didn’t make the addict buy the drugs and he’s just trying to make a buck to survive life on the streets.

The other day, I drove to a store to buy a few grocery items. I was in a hurry to get in and get out. An elderly man with a cane was walking toward the door in front of me. Immediately, I felt that his slow pace was going to make me a little later than I wanted to be for the other tasks I had to do that afternoon.

So I stepped quickly in front of the man and beat him to the door that opened automatically. When I got home, that little selfish act of mine bothered me for a while. Obviously, the man knew I had jumped in front of him. I tried to get into his mind about that. Maybe he was OK with it because he’s accepting of his age and his handicap. Then again, when I moved around him, he might have been painfully reminded that his time now is far beyond the years of his youth and mobility. Who knows? He might have been a high school football star who once ran for four touchdowns in a single game. I soon dismissed my guilt because whatever he might have felt about what I did, I was sure he’d get over it.

Later that night I watched the news and the devastation in Ukraine caused by Russian air attacks. I thought about the intentions of war and the killing of strangers and I said to myself, “Are the Ukrainians really strangers to me just because I don’t know any of them?” They’re human beings with the same kind of thoughts and feelings I have, but right now I’m sitting on my comfortable couch and they are running and hiding everywhere to try to save their lives.

Author Andrew Boyd wrote, “Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.”

Boyd’s words punched me right in the chest, especially his last sentence that ended with “empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.”

This made me think again of the pilot. Is he “empty enough” knowing that his actions might have killed a little girl the same age as his own daughter? Is he “empty enough” knowing that he could have killed a young man on the day of his 21st birthday?” Is he “empty enough” to go home and sit at the table with his wife and his children and listen to them tell him a funny story that makes him laugh when he knows he has forever silenced the laughter of how many families he’s killed with his bombs?

The consequences of disobeying military orders can be so serious as being sentenced to prison or even to die by execution. What kind of person, aware of these possible consequences, would train to fly an airplane that is sent on a mission to kill people who are aspiring to live happy lives just like his family and friends he loves in his homeland?

Pity this pilot, who can rest his head on a pillow, enjoy a good night’s sleep, and not think that his duty that day killed at least one stranger, who if given the choice, would have risked his own life to save his.

Lloyd Shearer wrote, “Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and the wrong. Sometime in life you will have been all of these.”

With his words, Shearer defines empathy. What makes me have it, and you have it, but those who hurt or kill not have this empathy for others is a question left only for God to answer.

The next time I go into that grocery store and I find myself walking behind a man with a cane, I’m going to let him beat me to the door.

Rich Strack can be reached at richiesadie11@gmail.com.