This is my attempt at a translation of a hebrew song by Shmulik Kraus, called - “Seeing Far, Seeing Clear”.

As things went awry

I had no choice but try

To spread my wings and fly away

To a place where my

Longing, wandering eyes

Could see so clearly

Far away

Chorus:

Man is like a wild fire

Ever hungering

And in him- embodying desire

A flame is burning

Then my path was lost

With nothing left to trust

I searched so desperate, in a haze

For a speck of truth

To give me back my youth

And to the future turn my gaze.

(Chorus)

A flame once made me leave

In search of greater things

I roamed and raged for days on-end

Then back home I found

That you are still around

To be with me until the end.

Link to the original text: https://shironet.mako.co.il/artist?type=lyrics&lang=1&prfid=606&wrkid=2804

How do you find the one? Well, that is an interesting question, I must say.

In order to even begin to answer it, I will have to first establish a few assumptions about the nature of people; the first of which being that we are all capable of ‘true love’. The second assumption is much more depressing: being ‘in love’ and ‘loving’ are two completely separate things, the latter being the one that you should be looking for.

The third assumption that I will be making, is even worse than the last: people do not know how to be content with what they have.

Now let us really begin: what is this ‘true love’?

As a species, we seem to be enchanted by the idea of love: we ponder endlessly about the meaning of the word, and about the nature of this elusive emotion. Some deny it, some embrace it, some praise it in song, others dare only speak of it in hushed whispers.

No matter how we tried to suppress and ignore love with arranged marriage, enforced life-long monogamy, and the modern culture of sleeping around; we have failed to shield ourselves from love’s effects. Love always finds a way to creep into our hearts, no matter how hard we try to resist; and therefore I would argue that love is real.

We confuse Love with lust, with fancy, with interest, curiosity, maternal instinct and a great many other things. We try to rationalize, analyze and dissect it, however it is all for naught; for love is nothing more or less than the essence of our world of endless contradictions.

Love is both the greatest weapon and the greatest weakness of mankind. Love is useless and miraculous, painful and joyous, true and false.

More often than not, we seek to control and possess the things we love, just to keep us in their proximity; as if attempting to shield ourselves from the loss and heartbreak that are sure to come in the end. Men and women wail at the loss of their loved ones or in the face of romantic failure because they do not understand what love really is!

Love is its own reward. Love is the opportunity to give without receiving: to love and not be loved, to have faith when there is no hope, and to be happy without possessing a thing. True Love is an endless sacrifice that must be made willingly each day anew. True Love is in itself happiness and strength, for a man that loves is a man that burns with a brilliant flame that cannot be extinguished.

Love is a great dream, a great Want, and just like all the other things that come along with our consciousness; it is both a curse and a blessing. When searching for true love, one must seek misery and sacrifice, because that is the currency of true love.

It is better to love than to be loved. It is better to be lonely than ungrateful. It is better to have nothing than to be taking everything for granted. It is better to be unappreciated than cherished. It is better to be the one abandoned rather than the one who leaves, and yes - it is better to be in love and to suffer, than to be comfortable and indifferent.

Just as Vladimir Vysotsky wrote in his ‘Ballad of Love’ (translation from Russian by Dan Guralnik):

“Their work is hard on their relentless travels --

Love is a boundless, strict and ruthless land.

To prove that they are worthy of her marvels,

Her champions must give their toil and blood,

They must endure despair and longest partings,

Be robbed of sleep and rest, and live in doubt.”

Love is perhaps humanity’s greatest discovery, and greatest invention. It is the greatest truth as it is the most virtuous lie. The only question that matters when approaching the subject of love, is the position that we chose to take in relation to it: if one is prepared to suffer, to work hard and to sacrifice - the true worth of love will become apparent.

Love is only as true as we believe it to be, and as painful as we allow it to become. Love is our flame: it is both the wind in our sails, and the current that moves against us. Love is both nothing and everything, and in its contradictory nature it hides the truest beauty that there is.

Love is the force emitted by our souls; it is the eternal flame which our bodies were meant to host, and by which we are destined to perish.

And so back to the original question: how does one find ‘The One’?

In light of all that I said, my answer is pretty simple: find a person who’s presence awakens in you the will to sacrifice everything. Find the one who makes you want to be indebted to them. Find the one who’s sole existence is enough for you to want to chose the hard way, each and every day anew.

There was an open rectangular hatch in the steel roof, through which the dim light of the stars could be seen when the clouds occasionally parted. The whole team was sleeping on the steel floor, and I was sitting on the bench and looking up at the night sky. I only had an hour or so till the end of my shift, and then Lidor was supposed to take my place on the bench next to the radio transmitter.

- What are we wating for? - I whispered to myself.

Of course, I knew exactly why we were waiting in that place: I knew that at some point, there would be rockets flying at us from the other side of the mountains on the horizon, and when that happens - our mission is to locate the source, and destroy it.

That answer was not at all satisfactory in my opinion, so I tried to search deeper, and thought that actually, each of us was probably waiting for something else entirely: Ari, for example, was sleeping in the corner and waiting for his fever to go away. Being the team’s medic, I tried my best to make his wish come true but frankly, I had little more than Paracetamol tablets to offer the poor guy. Ido was waiting to finally get demobilized, and go home for good, while Hanukkah was waiting to leave the team and go to the officer’s academy. Feitelson was waiting to see his girlfriend at home once we’re on leave, and Noam was supposed to go to his sister’s wedding in two days. Quite sadly, given the current circumstances, none of these scenarios were probable.

Then I asked myself again - what is it exactly that I’m waiting for?

Am I also waiting for my time to shed this uniform? Am I waiting to go home? Am I waiting to finally kill someone? Am I waiting to die?

It seemed as if my conscious mind was feeling threatened by this particular line of thinking, so it took me less than a second to lose concentration, and find myself staring at the stars again.

The night sky was quiet, flawless, still, and with no cloud in sight. The wind had ceased to harass the tall grass around our M-109 Howitzer cannon, and the trees fell silent. For a few seconds there, it got so quiet that I could hear my own heart beating slowly under the kevlar plates in my vest. And then the siren came.

The quiet of the night was relentlessly shattered by the wailing of the alarm, by radio chatter, and by Hanukka’s orders:

- Wake up! Battle stations! Get the breech open! I want a shell in here right now! - He screamed, and we obeyed.

- Opening breech! Charge and shell in the cannon! Targeting ready! - we shouted back in unison.

- Target coordinates received! Permission to load granted! - Hanukkah gave the orders, and Noam and I began loading the shell and explosives into the breech, as Feitelson calibrated the targeting computer. We were ready. Now we just had to wait for the Captain’s command to fire.

I waited another few seconds in place but then curiosity took over me, and I stepped onto the bench and looked through the hatch in the roof. At first the horizon was dark, but then there was a little spark of light rising far off in the distance, and then another one, and another one...

I couldn’t tear my gaze from those little sparks, and looked on in horror as they grew larger and larger. And I asked myself one last time - “What the fuck am I waiting for?!”

Then my world turned white, my hearing failed, the ground shook underneath my feet, and a violent shockwave pushed me down to the steel floor of the cannon.

I couldn’t see a thing, I couldn’t blink or move a muscle, but in that moment of sheer dread I have found my answer: I was not going to wait for the second explosion. I was not going to wait to pick up my friends in pieces.

I thought that there are soldiers exactly like us on the other side. There is probably also a medic exactly llike me out there: who had sworn to do no harm, who had promised his mother to come back home, who wants to grow old with a woman he loves, and to keep his brothers alive. I wished that it had not been this way. I wished that I could convince myself that the men seeking our deaths were animals that deserve to die in our stead, but I couldn’t. I knew that my life had no more worth than theirs, and that I had no right to to do the thing that I was about to do. However, I also knew that I am done waiting: I knew that I wasn’t going to keep Noam’s sister waiting. I knew that I wasn’t going to deny Ido’s mother the opportunity to see him come back home and that I was not going to stand between Feitleson and his girlfriend’s loving embrace.

I stood up, closed the hatch, and pulled the firing cable.

The recoil shook the cannon as forty kilograms of explosives and steel were launched into the air. We loaded another shell, and then another one... And I wasn’t waiting for anything anymore.