And from how many pine trees will YOU shake off the snow?

And from how many pine trees will YOU shake off the snow?

What is civic duty? What is patriotism? That you can choose for yourself. You can choose loud slogans on Facebook, or quiet acts that nobody will ever see. Well, maybe only a few slender little pine trees.

“My grandmother was of aristocratic bearing,” Nomeda told me today. “One evening, I was still a little girl then, with darkness already settling in, my grandmother got dressed and prepared to go out somewhere”. Nomeda said she was surprised at the time, where, at such a late hour, in the cold of the season, was she heading?

“Look, it snowed today earlier, then there was a thaw, and now it has frozen over again,” her grandmother explained, and told her she was going to shake the snow off the slender snow-laden pine trees growing in the grove nearby. Nomeda remembers her reaction to that very well, she replied, that perhaps her grandmother had gone mad, since she couldn't shake the snow off every pine tree in the whole forest.

"No, I won't be able to shake it off all of them, BUT OFF AS MANY AS I SHAKE IT OFF, THAT MANY WON'T BREAK,” was Nomeda's grandmother's answer.

That is what civic duty is. That is what patriotism is. Painfully simple.

Stand up and act.

I thank the Media Support Fund for supporting the post series “War in Ukraine: The Gap Between the Military and Society”