sacredness

In 2 days I have "done" Cambodia. I guess it's true in the sense that I have seen the 5 "best" of Angkor Wat's temples including sunrise and sunset at the Angkor Wat, I've eaten the typical Khmer dishes, I have traveled on the worst of highways I've ever been on checking out the cambodian countryside, I have spent the nights at 2 dollar hotels drinking Angkor beer, I've gone to the killing fields and the S-21 detention center, and i've been whizzed through the two biggest cities in cambodia on motor bike.

But how do you even start to digest so many things? I mean imagine it. One day I was watching the sunrise at Angkor Wat, the largest religious structure in the world and one which at times like that sunrise felt very sacred, and the next I was standing in front of the entrance to the Killing Fields in Phnom Penh, outside of which stood a sign which read 'please respect this sacred ground.' So here I was caught in between two very different sacreds, trying to digest what the last two days have meant for me.

Austin asked me the other day how much money it would take for me to kill someone. Besides being completely caught off guard, it started me thinking about how far I would go to protect the people that I care about. I responded that I could never envision killing someone to which he questioned, what if they were threatening someone in your family? Aha, so now they were definitely evil (as defined by anyone wanting to ever kill my fantastic family), well.. to that I responded, yeah, maybe I would.

So is that it? Can we define evil as someone who would kill families for no reason and then combat that by killing them?

But what if, in order to save my family I had to kill people who were innocent?

That was the question which weighed most heavily on my mind today when I stood in front of a tower of 9,000 skulls and walked through classrooms which had been converted into tiny brick cells.

What made people join the Khmer Rouge? Was it a desire to save themselves and their families? or did they really believe that the Khmer Rouge was in the right?

what would you do in that situation? If you had the choice between murdering a little child or someone else murdering you and your child?


I lit a candle in front of the sacred memorial and entered inside to see the skulls, aware that had I been who I am now, coming from an educated family full of professions, in Cambodia at that time, I and everyone I loved, probably would be dead.