A Story of Two Fathers; Unimaginable Grief and Despair.

On the left, a Ukrainian man who lost all his entire family pictured, murdered in a missile-strike by Russia.

On the right, a Palestinian man picking up the birth certificates for his 3-day-old twins when his wife and twins were murdered in a missile-strike by Israel.

All morning I haven't been able to shake the parallel fates of these two fathers. It adds another level of connection when I can simply look over to my healthy kids cheerfully playing, oblivious to such horrors.

My wife has a stressful job where she sees pretty crazy stuff. It helps keep her grounded. Nevertheless the "little things" can add up. So it's a common refrain for us to say, "At least our kids aren't in Ukraine or Gaza...Or Syria... Or Yemen..." and so on — and it's so unbelievably fucked that this happened at all because of propaganda and territorial conquest, something that we just can't seem to shake. That we cannot grasp that we're one people all on this planet just trying to work together. Isn't life hard enough as it is? Yet these psychopaths persist, From Sinwar to Putin to Netanyahu, and they continue to dupe masses to do the dirty work on their behalf.

Meanwhile there seems to be a clear double-standard and profound cognitive dissonance around the world in recognizing the tragedy of one of these over the other. I hope we can equalize our outrage for these and recognize that it's the innocent civilians caught in between who always suffer the most.

I don't know what more there is to say but what is already felt. I just don't know how a father can go on. I can only live for them and in some way or another make the world a little better.