Written by Pavle Gajic (PoP’s Podcast Editor)
I will speak as a person who is just another person.
I have not seen it all, but I have seen some. Also, as most people have, I have seen some good things and some bad things.
I was a civilian in a war at the age of 14. I was a child of war.
We slept in a basement. One morning I went outside to throw the trash. At the side of the garbage can was a black object, a part of something. Being a child, I, of course, took it into my hands. It was hot, but not that much.
Next moment I saw my grandpa running towards me, screaming to put the thing down. I was holding a part of a bomb which had fallen there during the night. What makes this story more interesting is the fact that those bombs were being filled with depleted uranium.
I put the thing down, and my grandpa took me to the hospital. Fortunately, the radiation level was in the normal part of the chart, equivalent to around 150 X-Rays. I was a child then, and that moment, holding a bomb, was nothing more than pure fear.
Years later, I was rethinking this. I was holding death in my hands.
To be more precise, death was holding me in its hands. I realized - that moment shaped me. I would not be the same person if that did not happen.
We try so hard to make our lives better on the outside, but we rarely try to find the solution in ourselves. Why is that? I believe that the answers lay inside of us.
Holding the bomb, I realized that life can turn off like a switch and that it shouldn’t be taken for granted. I learned that it should be used as much as it could. It is a shame wasting life because there are people that didn’t have a chance to experience the pleasure of life.
I have been to all continents by the age of 20. Swam in a few oceans. I finished the faculty and gained a lot of friends.