Is it Worth it?

Sako Gekchyan

 

Sako Gekchyan is a young man I befriended on Facebook. Sako is a proud ethnic Armenian who is spiritually a “Christian Mystique” for he hates fundamentalism. He notes that he is an underground rapper and R&B singer. The text below is a comment he posted recently on his page. I took the liberty of copying it to share with the readers of my blog and titled it “Is it Worth it?”.

 

Amidst all the heartbreak that has been caused by this war, I have been seeing a sentiment that I have encountered on and off throughout the years. There have been those who have echoed this sentiment as far back as the aftermath of the Hamidian Massacres. 

The sentiment I am referring to is the appeal to national suicide. Some have said that given how much our people have suffered over the centuries, given all the persecution and hardships we have faced and continue to face, would it not be better if we simply gave up and assimilated into surrounding cultures to make it easier on ourselves? After all, to be Armenian is to experience a heartbreak that very few peoples on this earth have known. If our people are going to constantly be fighting for their survival and that of their culture and civilization, would it not be better if we simply ceased to be? Would it not be better if Armenians collectively left Armenia and let it fall to the Turks? After all we have prospered in the diaspora. We have become successful business owners, academics, inventors, politicians and more. We would be a blessing to the nations we would settle in, a very educated and successful migrant people. To be Armenian is to suffer and for some among us, the suffering and pain are just not worth it. After all, is land, however sacred, worth all this blood?

My answer to this is unequivocally YES!

It’s not just a matter of having a land for the sake of having a land. Those barbarians would wipe our historical legacy off the face of the earth by destroying all our monuments and probably building mosques on top of them. 

As an individual, I feel purposeless if I am not serving a cause greater than myself. This is especially true for me because I am not particularly religious. Helping promote the cause of my people gives me meaning and purpose. I have had other goals. I am a singer and music producer. I have also considered video game design. I could easily pursue these career goals and they would give me a measure of satisfaction and fulfillment. But my heart would always be uneasy because my success, my personal accomplishments would feel incomplete if they are not in some way helping work towards a better future for my people. My Armenian culture is an inseparable part of my identity and I could never be anything but Armenian. 

Yes our nation has been fighting for its survival for centuries. Today our country is riddled with cowards and mobsters. At times it seems like our future is bleak and hopeless. But now is not the time to be victims, now is the time to be victors. We have poverty, war and suffering because of our own stupidity. We can blame the Turks all we want but at the end of the day we have to realize that they can’t do anything to us that we don’t allow them to do through our own negligence, in fighting, self-sabotage, jealousy and apathy. All this means is that we need to do better and work more intelligently as a people. 

If one truly cares about his people and his culture, he realizes that the survival of the civilization transcends the survival of individuals. 

I understand if someone has a simple desire to live a happy and fulfilling life, raise a family and die peacefully with his only concern being his loved ones. I don’t judge people with this conviction. If you hold to this way of thinking I respect you because nationalism is a heavy burden to bear. I myself have had days when I have thought along these lines.

But I myself and many other Armenians are willing to carry this burden and all the pain and suffering that come with it because we are not thinking about ourselves and our immediate loved ones, we are thinking about our future generations having a motherland they can be proud of, a motherland that can finally experience long-term peace and prosperity without the constant threat of annihilation, a motherland that is known throughout the world as a bastion of innovation, human rights, literature, music, the visual arts, philosophy and science, a motherland who’s ancient history is as known to the world as that of the Greeks, Romans, Persians and Egyptians. 

This is the hope and the future for which I am willing to give everything.