/lit/ - Literature

People have it so easy these days. It's simple to forget how rough life was--and still is, in places like Afghanistan--just several generations ago. Remembering that teaches a lesson in the value of faith, and why many today have no need for it.
I just read up on the life of Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, the famous Confederate general during the American Civil War. Damn this guy had it rough. Orphaned at 11, brothers and sisters dying left and right of typhoid and tuberculosis and everything in between, only to have a hard life in the military surrounded by death and bloodshed, often where the carnage was at its thickest. Yet through it all Jackson was stern and implacable, steeled by unwavering religiosity. Without this faith it is unthinkable that his mind would not implode under the pressure of all the loss and horror he experienced in his short life. It was said that his zeal is what gave him the moniker "old blue light", burning like a flare on the battlefield as if he were a beacon.

Personally I have no such faith and find it impossible to discover even if I wished. For this faithlessness I pay a penalty the cost of which I cannot even understand. Though I haven't always had an easy life, my troubles will forever be unredeemed. I am a coward.